MINSK, Belarus (MCT) — Belarusian authorities on Tuesday detained several suspects in connection with the deadly bomb attack on a metro station and said they were seeking at least two others, one a young man they said was of non-Slavic appearance.
Police said they were looking for as many as four men believed to be behind the Monday evening bombing in Minsk of the Oktiabrskaya station, which killed 12 people and injured 204, the Belpan news agency said.
“Several people” had already been detained as possible suspects, but none of them had confessed, Vice Prosecutor General Andrei Shved told reporters during a tour of the bomb scene, Belapan reported.
Russian experts, together with their Belarusian colleagues, were picking through debris. Some were using metal detectors.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday offered his Belarusian counterpart, Alexandr Lukashenko, assistance in determining the type of bomb used in the attack.
A team of Israeli bomb experts were to arrive in Belarus late Tuesday to aid in the investigation, officials said.
There were conflicting reports about the materials used in the bomb, with some Belarusian officials suggesting it may have contained the plastic explosive trotyl and others saying it was made from gunpowder.
The bomb was reportedly packed with metal bearings, nails and pieces of steel reinforcing rod. It was concealed beneath a bench and detonated when more than 300 people were in the metro station.
The explosion, which was caught on metro station video cameras, had a force equivalent to five to seven kilograms of TNT, officials said. Drawings of two people suspected of involvement in the bombing were in the hands of police. One drawing released to the media showed a man in his mid- to late-20s wearing a knitted cap. A police description accompanying the drawing said the man is suspected of being of “Caucasian nationality.”
