According to the Russian daily Kommersant, investigators believe Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova carried out the first bombing at Lubyanka station, close to the headquarters of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), in revenge for the death of her husband. That explosion claimed the lives of at least 20 morning rush hour commuters.
NewsTeam / AP
An undated photo of Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, suspected of being one of two female suicide bombers who attacked Moscow's subway, and Umalat Magomedo, an Islamist militant leader killed by government forces in December.
Kommersant also published a chilling picture of the baby-faced killer, dressed in a black Islamic headscarf and wielding a pistol, together with her gun-toting husband, Umalat Magomedov. Police said Abdurakhmanova came from Dagestan's Khasavyurt area, on the border with Chechnya, and met her future partner on the Internet when she was 16. Magomedov -- who headed a terrorist group in Dagestan and was a known associate of militant leader Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for the Moscow bombings on Wednesday -- was killed during a firefight with Dagestan police on Dec. 31, 2009.
The woman responsible for the second explosion, at the Park Kultury station, has not yet been formally identified. But Kommersant reported that investigators suspect she was Markha Ustarkhanova, a 20-year-old Chechen. Ustarkhanova was the widow of Chechen militant Said-Emi Khizriyev, who was killed by police last October. Khizriyev had been accused of plotting to murder Chechnya's Kremlin-backed president, Ramzan Kadyrov.
These latest findings appear to confirm security experts' suspicions that militant Islamists from the troubled North Caucasus are once again using black widows -- female bombers whose husbands, fathers or sons have been killed by Russian forces -- to strike out at Russia. Kommersant noted earlier this week that FSB agents believe up to 21 female suicide bombers are at large.
During an emergency meeting Thursday with leaders from the North Caucasus, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev promised to take a new hard line on terrorism.
"We must deal sharp dagger blows to the terrorists -- destroy them and their lairs," he said. "The list of measures to fight terrorism must be widened. They must not only be effective but tough, severe and preventative. We need to punish."
