A teenage Armenian woman was among 39 people killed in twin suicide bombings on Moscow’s underground railway, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
The explosions, which authorities said were set off by female suicide bombers linked to Islamist militants from the North Caucasus, ripped through two metro stations in the city center during the Monday morning rush hour.
Thirty-eight people were initially reported killed and more than 70 others seriously wounded in what was the deadliest attack on the Russian capital in six years. A 17-year-old woman, identified as Valentina Yegiazarian, died of severe injuries in hospital on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to 39.
Russia -- A relative of a victim of terrorist metro blasts cries outside a morgue in Moscow, 30Mar2010
Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan confirmed her ethnic Armenian origin. “Unfortunately, there is an Armenian victim who died in hospital today: the 17-year-old Valentina Yegiazarian,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. Balayan said two other Russian citizens of Armenian descent, both of them women, were also injured in the blasts and required hospitalization. Doctors says their condition is “satisfactory,” he added.
President Serzh Sarkisian joined world leaders in condemning the bombings and expressing condolences to Russia’s leadership and families of the victims. “Armenia resolutely condemns any manifestation of terrorism,” he wrote to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday.
“I am confident that everything will be done to identify and hold accountable the masterminds [of the attacks,]” said Sarkisian.
Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the culprits must be scraped "from the bottom of the sewers" and exposed as Moscow observed an official day
of mourning on Tuesday. Flags across the city flew at half-mast and somber Muscovites laid flowers and lit candles at the stations hit by the blasts