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| Belarus Attack |
Witnesses said a large explosion tore through the Oktyabrskaya metro station in central Minsk at the height of the evening rush hour when two trains were in the station. The most probable cause of the blast was an act of terror, the authorities said.
The station is close to a number of government buildings including the residence of Alexander Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm manager who has ruled the country with an iron first since 1994.
TV footage showed bloodied commuters sitting on the pavement outside and the wounded being taken away on stretchers.
"I heard a sound that was not very loud like champagne being opened and then an explosive wave smashed the glass in the carriage and it started to fill with smoke," said one passenger. "There was a lot of smoke and we began to fear that we would choke to death."
Mr Lukashenko convened an emergency meeting to discuss the bombing, which follows an unprecedented crackdown by him on his political opponents.
The 56-year-old president won a fourth term in power last December in an election that international observers decreed was neither free nor fair. People took to the streets on the night of the election to protest but were brutally dispersed. Mr Lukashenko then had almost every one of his presidential rivals arrested and put on trial.
Belarus has no history of serious terrorism, though a bomb at a concert in 2008which Mr Lukashenko attended wounded at least fifty people, and another blast in 2005 injured dozens. A shadowy anti-Lukashenko group calling itself the Belarusian National Liberation Army took responsibility for the 2005 blast but little has been heard of it since.
Sources: http://www.telegraph.co.uk
