A second suicide bombing in as many days in the Russian city of Volgograd has killed at least 14 people, injured dozens more and shredded Kremlin claims to have security under control in a region that will host the winter Olympics in less than six weeks.
President Vladimir Putin ordered a security clampdown in Volgograd and across the country following the bombing of a crowded trolleybus, which itself came less than 24 hours after 17 people were killed in a suicide attack at the city's main railway station.
The blast ripped apart the rush-hour trolleybus, leaving a tangled mess of metal and glass, without the roof and walls. At least 40 people were injured, including a one-year-old child who was in critical condition.
The explosion occurred as the trolleybus approached a stop near a market and the hospital, where many casualties from the train station attack were taken on Sunday.
Vladimir Markin, the spokesman for Russia's main investigative agency, said Monday's explosion involved a bomb similar to the one used in Sunday's attack at the city's main railway station.
"That confirms the investigators' version that the two terror attacks were linked," Markin said in a statement. "They could have been prepared in one place."
Police believe Sunday's attack was perpetrated by a male suicide bomber, possibly with the aid of an accomplice. Russian media reported that a doctor, Pavel Pechenkin, was a prime suspect; his father told reporters that he had been subjected to DNA tests to check whether it was his son's remains that were recovered from the Volgograd station.
Pechenkin reportedly hails from the Mari republic on the Volga river, 500 miles east of Moscow. He reportedly converted to Islam a few years ago and went to Dagestan to join local militants. His parents went there to search for him, but in vain.
It is the third bomb attack in Volgograd in three months, with most security experts linking the wave of attacks to the pledge by the Chechen jihadist leader Doku Umarov to disrupt the Olympic Games in Sochi. In a video posted on the web in July, Umarov, the leader of insurgents who want to carve an Islamic state out of the north Caucasus, a string of Muslim provinces south of Volgograd, urged militants to use "maximum force" to prevent the games from being held.
Local news sites reported that people in Volgograd, a city of more than 1 million inhabitants, were avoiding public transport and walking to work.
"For the second day, we are dying – it's a nightmare," a woman near the scene told Reuters, her voice trembling as she choked back tears. "What are we supposed to do – just walk now?"
The attacks have shocked Russia. Popular writer Sergey Minayev said on Twitter the atmosphere reminded him of 1999, when a series of bombings at apartment blocks shook Moscow. "It's like someone has declared a war on us," he wrote.
Volgograd, formerly known as Stalingrad, is also of great symbolic importance for Russians as the site of the bloodiest battle of the second world war – something that north Caucausian jihadist websites were quick to emphasise after the train station blast.
Security expert Andrey Soldatov told the Guardian that the Volgograd tragedy showed that militants had sufficient capability and manpower to stage deadly attacks beyond their region. It also means that Russian security bodies will be forced to divert their attention to other regions at a crucial time before the Olympic Games.
The IOC president, Thomas Bach, said on Monday he has full confidence that Russian authorities will deliver "safe and secure" games in Sochi despite the suicide bombings. The International Olympic Committee said Bach has written to Putin to express his condolences following the "despicable" and "cowardly" attacks.
