On the ninth day after tragedy, Moscow commemorates victims of metro terror acts

At the Park Kultury station of Moscow metro, the information terminal in the centre of the vestibule became a sort of a monument, at the bottom of which we can see a heap of flowers, candles and photos of those whose lives stopped here, in a fatal trip on March 29. In the Lubyanka station, for several days in a row fresh flowers make a broad semicircle successively lay. Many people go in metro cars towards the places of the tragedy holding two or four roses or carnations in their hands.

People do not forget the casualties. They were commemorated on April 6 also at the Solovki Boulder in the Lubyanka Square. Forty big candles - by the terror death roll in Moscow - were lit there.

However, as the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports, now there are much less flowers and visitors in the places of terror acts than in the first days after the explosions. There are no more journalists with their cameras and politicians of different levels at the improvised memorials. However, ordinary citizens - Muscovites and others - come here every day with their flowers.

"Our editorial office is in central Moscow, and I always go to my work via the Kitai-Gorod Metro station; sometimes I used a transition in Lubyanka. Now, after the terror acts, I try not to get there; because of unpleasant feelings," said Israpil Shovkhalov, editor-in-chief of the Caucasian independent magazine "Dosh".

He notes that when he heard about the explosions, he thought that loss of absolutely peaceful residents who were going in the morning to their workplaces or studies was terrible. "I also felt complete powerlessness, as anyone could be a casualty, and a threat can suddenly reach any place. There's no safeguard. I'm sure that the victims of all wars are not the initiators, but ordinary people, who, just like me, every morning go downstairs into the metro," Mr Shovkhalov said.

A resident of North Ossetia named Dan, who came to Lubyanka to lay flowers, said that on March 29 in the morning he arrived to Moscow from Vladikavkaz. "I have Caucasian appearance; and my relatives thought that I'd have problems with the militia. Then I thought, who and why needed these terror acts? I don't believe that this can be a targeted revenge for something: who will be revenged for? All the religions say that revenge should be directed at those directly guilty of particular crimes. But killing innocent people...," said the man.

Journalist Lilia Mukhamedyarova, who is wearing a hijab, writes in her Internet diary in LiveJournal: "Today we watched with Khava how people run away from us in all directions in the metro. Probably, today it was the heyday of such moods. 'I pity all of them a lot,' said Khava."

The traditional commemoration day (the ninth day) fell on the Light Tuesday of the Easter Week. It is considered that on this day the doors to the paradise open, as the "Voice of Russia" reports. All the Orthodox churches in Moscow held requiem services.

It is planned to install memorial boards at the stations, where explosions were triggered on March 29, the "Kremlin.Org" writes. As a result of the terror acts, committed by two women-suicide-bombers, 40 persons were lost - Muscovites and guests from other Russian regions, and two citizens of Tajikistan. The bodies 39 of them - 23 men and 16 women - have been identified.

Let us remind you that just yesterday, on April 6, it became known that the explosion at Lubyanka metro station on March 29 was committed by Maryam Sharipova, a native of Dagestan, born in 1982, a wife of Magomedali Vagabov, one of the leaders of Dagestan militants. This was reported by the Federal Operative Staff of the National Antiterrorist Committee (NAC).

Earlier, the other woman-suicide-bomber, who blew herself up in the Moscow metro, was preliminarily identified as Jennet Abdurakhmanova, 17, a widow of Umalat Magomedov, leader of Dagestan militants liquidated in late December 2009.