Moscow mourns 13 rock festival dead

The Kremlin flag flew at half-mast today as Moscow observed a day of mourning for 13 victims of a double suicide bombing at a rock festival.

Friends and relatives of the dead brought flowers, poems and messages to a makeshift shrine at the site of Saturday’s attack at Tushino airfield.

The Moscow mayor’s office asked television stations to cancel entertainment programming as part of the mourning.

Two women – “black widows” whose husbands were killed by Russian forces in Chechnya – blew themselves up about 10 minutes apart in crowds of people waiting to enter the airfield’s gates.

They killed themselves and 13 others and wounded about 60. Most of the victims were women in their early 20s.

No one claimed responsibility for the blasts, but authorities blamed Chechen rebels.

A passport found at the scene identified one of the bombers as 19-year-old Zulikhan Elikhadzhiyeva from Chechnya.