Witnesses described panic at two central Moscow stations after the blasts, with commuters falling over each other in dense smoke and dust as they tried to escape the worst attack on the Russian capital in six years.
Sixty-four others were injured, many gravely, and officials said the death toll could rise. Russia’s top security official said the bombs were filled with bolts and iron rods.
No group immediately claimed responsibility, but Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Alexander Bortnikov said those responsible had links to the North Caucasus, a region plagued by insurgency whose leaders have threatened to attack cities and energy pipelines elsewhere in Russia.
“A crime that is terrible in its consequences and heinous in its manner has been committed,” Putin told emergency officials in a video call.
“I am confident that law enforcement bodies will spare no effort to track down and punish the criminals. Terrorists will be destroyed.”
The chief of the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said: “Body parts belonging to two women suicide bombers were found...and according to initial data, these persons are linked to the North Caucasus.”
The first blast tore through the second carriage of a metro train just before 8 a.m. as it stood at the Lubyanka station, close to the headquarters of Russia’s main domestic security service, the FSB. It killed at least 23 people.
A second blast, less than 40 minutes later in the second or third carriage of a train waiting at the Park Kultury metro station, opposite Gorky Park, killed 12 more people, Emergencies Ministry officials said. Another three people died in hospital.
Reuters photographers saw body bags being brought out of both stations. Some of the wounded were airlifted to hospitals in helicopters and central Moscow was brought to a standstill as police closed off major roads.
“It was very scary. I saw a dead body,” said Valentin Popov, a 19-year-old student traveling on a train to the Park Kultury station, told Reuters.
“Everyone was screaming. There was a stampede at the doors. I saw one woman holding a child and pleading with people to let her through, but it was impossible.”
“I was in the middle of the train when somewhere in the first or second carriage there was a loud blast. I felt the vibrations reverberate through my body,” an unidentified man who was on a train at Park Kultury told RIA news agency.
Surveillance camera footage posted on the Internet showed several motionless bodies lying on the floor or slumped against the wall in Lubyanka station lobby and emergency workers crouched over victims, trying to treat them.
US President Barack Obama condemned the bombings as did European Union leaders.
The UN Security Council also strongly condemned the terrorist attacks as “an unjustifiable crime.”
