You are reading “All Apartment”, one entry from Anniston Housing

Published:

31.08.09 / 8pm

All Apartment

The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing nearly 300 people and spreading a wave of fear across the country. Together with the Invasion of Dagestan launched by militants from Chechnya in August 1999, the bombings caused the Russian Federation to intensify the Second Chechen war.

The blasts hit Buynaksk on September 4, Moscow on September 9 and 13, and Volgodonsk on September 16. Several other bombs were defused in Moscow at the time. A similar bomb was found and defused in the Russian city of Ryazan on September 23. On the next day FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the Ryazan incident had been a training exercise and the bomb was declared a fake. Contrary to this, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb, insisted that it was real.

A criminal investigation of the bombings was completed in 2002. According to the investigation and the court ruling that followed, the bombings were organized by Achemez Gochiyaev, who remained at large as of 2009, and ordered by Arab Mujahids Ibn Al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif, who have been killed. Six other suspects have been convicted by Russian courts.

Previous threats

A Finnish journalist who in mid-August 1999, before the bombings, travelled to the village of Karamakhi in Dagestan, interviewed some villagers and their military Commander General Dzherollak. The journalist wrote: "The Wahhabis' trucks go all over Russia. Even one wrong move in Moscow or Makhachkala, they warn, will lead to bombs and bloodshed everywhere." According to the journalist the Wahhabis had told him, "if they start bombing us, we know where our bombs will explode." In the last days of August, Russian military launched an aerial bombing of the villages.

The bombings

Overview

Five apartment bombings took place and at least three attempted bombings were prevented. All bombing had the same "signature", judging from the nature and the volume of the destruction. In each case the explosive RDX was used, and the timers were set to go off at night and inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties. The explosives were placed to destroy the weakest, most critical elements of the buildings and force the buildings to "collapse like a house of cards". The terrorists were able to obtain or manufacture several tons of powerful explosives and deliver them to numerous destinations across Russia . 27 terrorist suspects had been arrested in Moscow over the period of 9-14 September but later released

Moscow mall

On August 31 , 1999 , at 20:00 local time a powerful explosion took place in a busy Moscow shopping center. One person was killed and 40 others injured. According to FSB, the explosion had been caused by a bomb of about 300g of explosives.

Buynaksk, Dagestan

On September 4 , 1999 , at 22:00 (18:00 GMT), a car bomb detonated outside a five story apartment building in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan, near the border of Chechnya. The building was housing Russian border guard soldiers and their families. 64 people were killed and 133 were injured in the explosion. Another car bomb was found and defused in the same town. The defused bomb was in a car containing 2,706 kilograms of explosives. It was discovered by local residents in a parking lot surrounded by an army hospital and residential buildings. (Felshtinsky & Pribylovsky 2008, pp. 105-111)

Moscow, Pechatniki

On September 9 , 1999 , shortly after midnight local time, at 20:00 GMT, 300 to 400 kg of explosives detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building in south-east Moscow (19 Guryanova Street). The nine-story building was destroyed, killing 94 people inside and injuring 249 others. 15 nearby buildings were also damaged. A total of 108 apartments were destroyed during the bombing. An FSB spokesman identified the explosive as RDX. Residents said a few minutes before the blast four men were seen speeding away from the building in a car.

The President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin ordered the search of 30,000 residential buildings in Moscow for explosives.. He took personal control of the investigation of the blast.. Vladimir Putin declared September 13 a day of mourning for the victims of the attacks.

Moscow, Kashirskoye highway

On September 13 , 1999 , at 5:00 a.m., a large bomb exploded in a basement of an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow, about 6 km from the place of the last attack. 118 people died and 200 were injured. This was the deadliest blast in the chain of bombings. The eight-story building was flattened, littering the street with debris and throwing some concrete pieces hundreds of yards away.

Moscow, attempted bombings

According to FSB public relations director Alexander Zdanovich and Oksana Yablokova of The Moscow Times, official investigators defused explosives on Borisovskiye Prudy street in Moscow September 14, 1999. Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko added a site in the Liublino district and another in Kapotnya to the list of caches. Satter wrote that three attempted bombings were prevented.

According to the messages received by Yuri Felshtinsky and by Prima News agency from someone claiming to be Achemez Gochiyaev, on September 13 , 1999 a bomb was defused in a building in the Kapotnya area. A warehouse containing several tons of explosives and six timing devices was found at Borisovskiye Prudy. The author of the messages wrote that he called the police and warned about the bombing locations, which helped to prevent a large number of further casualties. Gochiyaev or his impersonators claimed that he was framed by his old acquaintance, an FSB officer who asked him to rent basements "as storage facilities" at four locations where bombs were later found.

Volgodonsk

A truck bomb exploded on September 16 , 1999 , outside a nine-story apartment complex in the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk, killing 17 people and injuring 69. The bombing took place at 5:57 am. Surrounding buildings were also damaged. The blast also happened nine miles from a nuclear power plant. Prime Minister Putin signed a decree calling on law enforcement and other agencies to develop plans within three days to protect industry, transportation, communications, food processing centers and nuclear complexes.

Ryazan incident

On the evening of September 22 , 1999 , a resident of an apartment building in the city of Ryazan noticed two suspicious men who carried sacks into the basement from a car with a Moscow license plate. ,,. He alerted the police, but by the time they arrived the car and the men were gone. The policemen found three 50 kg sacks of white powder in the basement. A detonator and a timing device were attached and armed. The timer was set to 5:30 AM. Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad, disconnected the detonator and the timer and tested the three sacks of white substance with a "MO-2" gas analyzer. The device detected traces of RDX, the military explosive used in all previous bombings.

Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city, and 30,000 residents were evacuated from the area. 1,200 local police officers armed with automatic weapons set up roadblocks on highways around the city and started patrolling railroad stations and airports to hunt the terrorists down. In the morning, "Ryazan resembled a city under siege". Composite sketches of two men and a woman terrorist suspects were shown on TV. In the morning of September 23 Russian television networks reported the attempt to blow up a building in Ryazan using RDX. Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Rushailo announced that police prevented a terrorist act. Later in the evening Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the Ryazanians and called for the air bombing of the Chechen capital Grozny. In the evening of September 23, the perpetrators were caught. A telephone service employee tapped into long distance phone conversations and managed to detect a talk in which an out-of-town person suggested to others that they "split up" and "make your own way out". That person's number was traced to a telephone exchange unit serving FSB offices. When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They were soon released on orders from Moscow. According to the head of FSB Nikolai Patrushev, the exercise was carried out to test responses after the earlier blasts. FSB issued a public apology about the incident.

Other related events

The type of explosives controversy

It was initially reported by the F