VOLGOGRAD, December 30. /TASS/. Hundreds of red carnations have been brought to a column of red granite built on the site of a terrorist act which killed 16 people in an explosion staged in a trolleybus in Volgograd a year ago.

Archpriest Vyacheslav Zhebelev, who conducted a commemoration service for the victims of the terrorist act, condemned terrorism as “treacherous activity which ruins one's mind." "Those who commit terrorist acts are the devil incarnate," the archpriest said.

A local veteran, Zinaida Chistyakova, compared last year's terrorist act with an echo of the 1943 Stalingrad battle. "The rattle of the explosion brought back the memories of the WWII battle. I came here and saw people lying dead, ambulances rushing the wounded away to hospitals. Let all those dead lie in peace, but I wish they were alive," the woman said.

A series of terrorist acts were staged in Volgograd last year. A bus explosion staged in the city on October 21, 2013 killed seven and 37 were wounded. Eighteen people were killed and 45 wounded in a terrorist act staged by a suicide bomber in the building of the Volgograd railway station on December 29, 2013; sixteen more fell victim to a terrorist act staged in a trolleybus on December 30, 2013. Twenty-eight people, wounded in the December 30 explosion, survived.

The terrorists responsible for terrorist acts in Volgograd were liquidated during special anti- terrorist operations conducted in the North Caucasus; their accomplices were sentenced to long prison terms.