Rush-Hour Bombing Kills 7 in Moscow Underpass

MOSCOW —  A bomb exploded during the evening rush hour Tuesday in a pedestrian underpass at one of this city’s busiest commuter hubs, killing seven people and injuring dozens in a blast authorities blamed on Chechen terrorists.

In the minutes after the explosion at Pushkin Square, thick black smoke streamed from one entrance of the underpass as bleeding people fled, some with their clothing literally shredded. Other dazed and injured victims, covered in blood, lay on the sidewalks awaiting ambulances.

ORT television showed bodies on the ground inside the tunnel amid twisted metal and shattered glass, the remains of the underpass shops. The underpass is adjacent to two busy subway stations.

Svetlana Leonova, 14, was shopping in the underpass about 6 p.m. when there was a bright flash and the roar of the explosion, followed by darkness. Outside, she described dragging her badly burned mother through the passage, where many people lay injured and moaning.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred at one of the most popular meeting places in the heart of Moscow, where a statue of Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s favorite poet, stands adjacent to the first McDonald’s in the capital.

But Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov, who visited the scene, voiced the conviction of many Russians when he characterized the bombing later as “100% Chechnya.”

Russian television reported that police were searching for two suspects who appeared to be from the Caucasus region of southern Russia, where Chechnya is located.

Two suspects, a Chechen and a resident of the neighboring southern republic of Dagestan, have been detained, Russian television reported today.

“We do not exclude that they were both behind the terrorist act,” Vladimir Pronichev, first deputy chief of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, told Russian television.

In the shock and anger that followed the blast, many people at the scene were calling for tougher military action against the rebels in Chechnya.

Following as it did a series of bombings of apartment blocks in Moscow and southern Russia last fall that killed about 300 people, the explosion renewed an atmosphere of insecurity and fear of Chechen violence in the Russian capital.

Leonova said she smothered the flames burning on her mother’s back but lost consciousness in the thick smoke in the underpass as she tried to drag the older woman out.

Sitting apparently in shock near the underpass, her hair singed and her face gray with ash and soot, she said she did not know who had carried her out or where her mother was.

Nearby, pirated CDs blown into the air by the impact of the blast were strewn about. A severely burned woman lay motionless as ambulance officers put a drip in her arm.

“My mother’s whole back was burning. I tried to put out the fire with my hands, then I began beating her back with a bag. There was smoke coming from everywhere. It was very dark and very difficult to breathe,” Leonova said.

“I just went where I could, dragging my mom’s body. She moaned and moaned, and it got louder and louder, and then I realized that there were many moaning and screaming people around me in the darkness,” she said.

“There was a lot of broken glass under my feet and lots of sticky liquid. I suddenly started choking. My mom stopped moaning, and her body felt totally lifeless. I called out to her, but she made no sound.”

Like many others, Leonova blamed Chechen rebels.

“Who else can it be? They are such idiots, they could do anything,” she said.

A spokesman said Russian President Vladimir V. Putin had taken personal control of the investigation into the blast, and authorities reportedly tightened security at nuclear plants and other likely terrorist targets.

Alexei Sorokin, a 20-year-old student who was offering water to victims of the blast from a plastic bottle, said he ran into the pitch-black, smoky tunnel after the bomb went off and carried three burned people out.

“I just came out of the underpass when I heard the sound of the explosion behind me. I turned and saw smoke coming out of the tunnel, and people started running out of there screaming like mad, tripping and falling over each other,” he said.

Sorokin said he had carried out a severely burned girl about 8 or 9 and an elderly man.

“The third body was so badly burned that it was hard to say whether it was a man or a woman. I think this person was certainly dead, but we brought this body to the entrance anyway, and then I started to suffocate and came out here to take some fresh air,” he said.

“I am sure it is a terrorist act. It is the bloody Chechens, I’m sure of it. I think we have to turn Chechnya into a potato field, otherwise this kind of thing will go on forever.”

An explosives expert from the Moscow police, Adolf Mishuyev, said the explosion was equivalent to at least 400 grams--nearly a pound--of TNT. He said it was possible that the bombing was a suicide attack, because the point of detonation was at least 6 inches off the ground.

“It could have been activated by a person who decided to take his own life. It could be that body found without legs,” he speculated.

If it can be shown that the bombing was a suicide attack, that will no doubt intensify suspicions of Chechen rebel involvement. There has recently been a series of rebel suicide attacks in the separatist republic.

Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov denied that Chechen rebels were responsible for the blast and expressed his condolences to the victims. Maskhadov, however, exerts control over few rebel commanders in Chechnya.

Russian authorities blamed Chechen rebels for the apartment bombings in Moscow and southern Russia last fall--but little evidence has ever been produced--and then renewed a war against Chechnya that had run from 1994 to 1996 and had ended only when Russia retreated in defeat.

In the second Chechen war, Russian forces seized control of most of the republic’s territory but have since become bogged down in a grueling campaign, sustaining high casualties in guerrilla attacks.

Russian forces in Chechnya had been expecting a big strike from the Chechen side on Sunday, the date when rebels launched a major attack in 1996, seizing the capital, Grozny, and defeating the Russians.

Alexander A. Zdanovich, a spokesman for the FSB, told Echo of Moscow radio late Tuesday that the security forces in Moscow were on high alert and that Interior Ministry forces from surrounding regions were being deployed in the capital.

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Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.