DUSHANBE, December 30, 2013, Asia-Plus – Tajik Embassy in Moscow reports Tajik national, Rahmonali Ghoziyev, 42, was seriously injured in an explosion that rocked a train station in the Russian city of Volgograd on December 29.
“Rahmonali Ghoziyev is currently in Volgograd’s emergency hospital # 25 and physicians assess his health condition as serious,” an official source at the Tajik Embassy in Moscow said.
Russia officials say a suicide attack on a train station in Volgograd has killed 16 people.
Sunday”s explosion reportedly rocked Volgograd-1 station at around 12:45. The explosion shattered windows and sent debris and plumes of smoke from the station entrance. About 40 people are said to have been injured, including a nine-year-old girl whose mother was killed in the attack.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the blast, but a spokesman for Russia”s Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, said the incident was being treated as an act of terrorism.
According to him, the bomb used in the attack contained 10 kg of TNT, was rigged with shrapnel and was detonated near the metal detectors at the station entrance.
Initial official claims that the bomber was a lone woman have been replaced with uncertainty about who carried it out, with suggestions the bomber could have been a man or that there could have been multiple bombers.
The BBC reports that President Vladimir Putin has ordered security to be tightened at railway stations and airports across Russia. Moscow is concerned militant groups could be ramping up violence in the run-up to the 2014 winter Olympic Games in the city of Sochi in six weeks.
It was the second terrorist act in Volgograd this year. We will recall that a suspected female suicide bomber killed at least six people when she attacked a bus in Volgograd in October.
