Moscow, Jan. 24: An explosion at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday has claimed at least 31 lives and wounded 130, officials of the health ministry said.
According to the Interfax news agency, which cited an unnamed source, and the state-run RIA Novosti, the blast at Moscow’s busiest airport was caused by a suicide bomber.
It is learnt that the explosion occurred in the arrivals hall.
The Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei radio station quoted a traveller identified as Viktor as saying that he, while waiting for a car outside the airport, heard the bang of the explosion.
“There was an explosion, a bang,” he told the radio station. “Then I saw a policeman covered in fragments of flesh and all bloody. He was shouting, ‘I’ve survived! I’ve survived!’”
Mr Mark Green, a British Airways passenger who had just arrived at the airport, told BBC News that he heard the huge explosion as he was leaving the terminal.
“We were walking out through the exit of the arrivals hall towards the car, and there was this almighty explosion... a huge bang. We didn’t know it was an explosion at the time, and my colleague and I looked at each other and said, ‘Christ that sounds like a car bomb or something,’ because the noise was... literally... it shook you,” Mr Green told BBC News. “People started flowing out of the terminal, some of whom were covered in blood. One gentleman had a pair of jeans on that was ripped and his thigh from his groin to his knee was covered in blood.”
Emergency workers were tending to the wounded, agencies quoted onlookers as saying. A BBC News report said Russia’s chief investigator suspected the explosion was the work of terrorists.