Belarus has subway bomb suspect

Intelligence forces in Belarus have said they now know who carried out the fatal metro attack which killed 12 people and wounded more than 200.

The domestic security agency, which still goes under its Soviet-era name KGB, said that had identified the man probably behind yesterday’s explosion at a busy Minsk station and was searching for him.

Interior Minister Anatoly Kuleshov said police had composite pictures of two male suspects from witnesses. He said the bomb apparently was radio-controlled.

The Interior Ministry said the bomb placed under a bench on the Oktyabrskaya station exploded as people were coming off the trains at an evening peak hour.

Oktyabrskaya is within 100 yards of the presidential administration building and the Palace of the Republic, a concert hall often used for government ceremonies.

Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko said that foreign forces could be behind the explosion, but he did not elaborate.

Authorities said that 204 people have needed medical treatment and 157 of them have been hospitalised, including 22 in critical condition.

Viktor Sirenko, the chief doctor of the Minsk Emergency Hospital, said that many victims had lost arms or legs.

People streamed to the site of explosion to lay flowers as police tightened security at all subway stations.

Mr Lukashenko, in power for nearly 17 years and dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” by the West, was declared the overwhelming winner of December’s presidential election which international observers said was rigged. He has run the former Soviet nation of 10 million with an iron fist, retaining Soviet-style controls over the economy and cracking down on opposition and independent media.

He took his 6-year-old son to visit the site of the explosion about two hours after the blast. He later ordered the country’s feared security forces to “turn everything inside-out” to find the culprits.

Alexander Milinkevich, a prominent opposition leader, voiced fears that the explosion could serve as a pretext for a further crackdown on dissent.

“Forces both inside and outside the country, which are interested in the destabilisation of the situation in Belarus, could profit from that terror attack,” he said. “These forces want to provoke even harsher political repressions.”

More than 700 people, including seven presidential candidates, were arrested after massive protests against fraud in December’s presidential vote.

The European Union and the United States have responded to the flawed vote with sanctions, leaving Mr Lukashenko to rely exclusively on his main sponsor and ally Russia.