Moscow market bomb kills 10 people
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Your support makes all the difference.Ten people, including two children, were killed when abomb exploded in a bustling Moscow market.
The bomb, equivalent to 1.5kg of TNT, ripped through Cherkizovsky market in north-east Moscow in the middle of the morning yesterday, destroying a 200-metre section of the market. The victims were mostly stall-holders and shoppers.
Russian television broadcast pictures of traumatised survivors picking their way through a sea of debris. Eyewitnesses said they had seen three men "of Slavic appearance" behaving suspiciously before the explosion. The men had allegedly abandoned a bag at a café inside the market before running off. An FSB security service official said that two men had been arrested and had protested their innocence.
The authorities played down the idea that the incident might be a terrorist act, arguing that the bombing was more likely to have been part of a turf war between rival businessmen or criminals. Protection rackets are still common in Russia, where businessmen pay gangs a slice of their profits in exchange for a krysha or "roof", to avoid being terrorised.
Chechen separatist rebels have not staged a major terrorist incident in Moscow since 2004, confining themselves to battling federal forces on their home territory.
Some 40 people were injured by the blast and taken to hospital with at least one of the wounded, a child, said to be in a critical condition.
Many of the market traders were non-Russian "guest workers" from the largely impoverished former Soviet republics in central Asia or entrepreneurs from volatile regions of Russia such as Chechnya.
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