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Russian metro bombings

A bomb exploded in a subway train in St. Petersburg on Monday, April 3

MOSCOW, April 3. /TASS/. A bomb exploded in a subway car as it was travelling between the Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut metro stations in St. Petersburg at about 3 pm Moscow time on April 3.

At least ten people were killed and some 40 hospitalized with injuries, according to Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova.

The Russian Investigative Committee said the explosion was a terrorist attack, adding that it is considering other versions of the tragedy.

Before the April 3 accident, all subway bombings in Russia had occurred only in Moscow.

On January 8, 1977, three explosive devices detonated in Moscow. The first bomb went off on a train between the Izmailovskaya and Pervomaiskaya metro stations. The second bomb exploded inside a grocery store on Bolshaya Lubyanka street close to the KGB headquarters. The third bomb detonated on the 25th October (now Nikolskaya) street, just a few hundred meters away from the Red Square. The attacks claimed seven lives and 37 people were injured. Three suspects, members of an Armenian nationalist organization, were arrested three months later, and executed in 1979.

On June 11, 1996, a bomb blast ripped through a subway train between the Tulskaya and Nagatinskaya stations, killing four people and injuring 16. Two suspects were arrested in December 1997 but their names were not made public and no media reports of their trial were published.

On January 1, 1998, an explosive device equivalent to 150 grams of TNT exploded at the Tretyakovskaya station in central Moscow. The bomb was hidden in a purse and went off before the bomb squad arrived, injuring three people.

On August 8, 2000, an explosive device equivalent to some 800 grams of TNT went off in an underground passageway under the Pushkin Square in central Moscow. Thirteen people were killed and 118 injured. The names of the attackers were never made public but six years later Moscow prosecutor Yuri Semin said they were dead.

On February 5, 2001, an improvised explosive device equivalent to some 300 grams of TNT planted under a marble bench detonated at Belorusskaya metro station in central Moscow. Twenty people, including two children, were injured.

On February 6, 2004, suicide bomber Anzor Izhayev killed 41 people in a subway train between the Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya subway stations. More than 250 people were injured. The improvised explosive device was equivalent to 4 kilograms of TNT.

On March 29, 2010, the Lubyanka and Park Kultury metro stations in central Moscow were rocked by suicide bombings carried out by two women during the morning rush hour. A total of 41 people were killed in the blasts, and 88 people were injured. Magomedali Vagabov, the militant behind the bombings, was killed in a special operation in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan in August 2010.