Suicide explosion at Moscow Domodedovo

[Memetic]

At least ten people killed and 20 others injured in explosion at Moscow's Domodedovo international airport via @BBCBreaking

[SaturnV]

AP gives location as:

"There was no immediate word on the cause of the explosion in the international baggage-claim area at Domodedovo airport."

[rmac]

Russian news now reporting 20+ dead.

Maybe not in baggage reclaim, but in meet and greet area.

Reporting suicide bomber

[Bolli]

At least 31 killed in bomb blast at Russia's Domodedovo Airport - Interfax


Keeps going up...
Bomb blast at Moscow airport kills 20 - report | Reuters (http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE70N31020110124)
its going up so quick that the headlines are changing but the article is not

[bizjets101]

RT (http://rt.com/) :( local coverage . . .

[rmac]

I regularly go through DME international arrivals. baggage reclaim no larger than 300 sqm with 5 or 6 belts and always packed full mid afternoon on a Monday. This is peak time. Expect the numbers to rise...

[Kulverstukas]

Blast in non-sterile arrival area, near cafe Asia. 35 confirmed dead, more than 120 injured, some 20 seriously.

Now reported about 7-10 kg in TNT equivalent packed "full of metal pieces".


BdA9rk_pXQk&sns

[Mr.Black]

Maybe not in baggage reclaim, but in meet and greet area.

That would make sense as many airports let you get pretty close to the doors where pax come out without stringent security. Far easier than getting air-side in the terminal but same effect if you choose a busy time. The world is turning to :mad: with all these crazies around the world :{

[rmac]

I flew in to Vladivostok from Beijing today. There were THREE search dogs in the very small single belt baggage reclaim area and one outside at the meet and greet.

I thought that there was a crackdown on drug smugglers underway, now I have to ask if the FSB had some non specific intelligence going on somewhere......

[DCS99]

Lot of dead people lying on the floor at the end of that Youtube clip.

Bad, very bad.

[firstchoice7e7]

yes looks very bad on the youtube clip, bbc have just had a phone interview from a passenger on board BA872 which landed at 1546, he said he was at the front of the cabin and was one of the first off, he had just reached the car park when he heard the blast and he said he was extremely surprised if no one on the flight was affected by the incident. European airline flights which landed in the same time frame were : LH from Hamburg at 1542, OS from Vienna at 1517, AB from Dusseldorf at 1552

[G-CPTN]

Lot of dead people lying on the floor at the end of that Youtube clip.
And a couple of people 'retrieving' abandoned luggage . . .

[lexxity]

sky news reporting all on arriving bmi flight ok. It was apparently held on landing. I hope this is correct.

Sad news indeed.

[Kulverstukas]

3 male suspects was catched on CCTV. They came through unsecured arrival entrance. When they was stoped by militia patrol for document checking bomb was activated.

watch Russia 24 (http://www.vesti.ru/videos?vid=onair_low) online

[kblackburn]

Thanks for that Kulverstukas...

I'm watching the news on "1" channel (my wife is Russian) and this wasn't mentioned. Good info.

[Rollingthunder]

Two Britons are among 35 people believed to have been killed along with 170 injured in an explosion caused by a dual suicide attack at Moscow's main commercial airport.
The Foreign Office was this evening frantically trying to confirm the news on the British deaths, as reported by Russian agency Interfax, who earlier said the explosion was caused by a bomb with 7kg of TNT and police searching for three male suspects.
'We are investigating the situation, have people on the ground there,' a spokesman told the Daily Mail online. 'We are speaking to our Russian colleagues in an attempt to confirm the reports.'
Russia's top investigative agency said the blast happened at 4.30pm local time in the arrivals hall of Domodedovo Airport, the busiest of capital's three airports, which is 26 miles outside Moscow.


dailymail

[Kulverstukas]

QT6VCcFk_X8

Camera at custom exit, I belive.

[Hotel Tango]

When UK airports shut the stable doors after the horses had bolted and stopped vehicles getting close to terminals I always wondered what would stop suicide bombers detonating suitcases full of explosives in a crowded check-in area. Let's face it, it's not suspicious carrying a suitcase into an airport departures area - and in the UK there's no security prior to entering a terminal. It doesn't stop me travelling but I do think about it. This incident has highlighted my concerns.

[Icare9]

Go on, HT, give 'em all the clues to do a better job....
Sometimes the urge to put your name on a posting is done without thinking through the potential consequences....
Zip it and think, next time, please...

[MartinCh]

Icare9, that's pretty useless what you say, to be PC right now..

[Bill Harris]

Go on, HT, give 'em all the clues to do a better job....

No doubt, "they" have already figured that out, and more. I don't think that HT's observation was a great revelation to them.

[aterpster]

Hotel Tango:

When UK airports shut the stable doors after the horses had bolted and stopped vehicles getting close to terminals I always wondered what would stop suicide bombers detonating suitcases full of explosives in a crowded check-in area. Let's face it, it's not suspicious carrying a suitcase into an airport departures area - and in the UK there's no security prior to entering a terminal. It doesn't stop me travelling but I do think about it. This incident has highlighted my concerns.

The U.S. hasn't even stopped the vehicles snugging up to the terminal building.

When I travel out of LAX in particular I always think about it and conclude the odds are greatly in my favor on a personal basis.

[Farrell]

That would make sense as many airports let you get pretty close to the doors where pax come out without stringent security.

Can see this privilege disappearing overnight in the Republic of Knee-jerks.
Anyone checked-in at any US or UK establishment today?
One wonders what new joys will be implemented to 'protect' us.....until the next car-park bomb widens the security circle......then an innovative motorway-junction bomb or IED on the side of the road in Crawley.....until it gets to the stage where I will have to be strip-searched each time I walk through my own gate at home.

[tailstrikecharles]

especially and particularly to an attacker who m does not have escape as a priority (it doesn't even have to be a suicide attack)

Squealing at posters like little sheep as if not mentioning the obvious somehow makes you safe-ish.

ALL airport checkpoints are based on manners - you are politely ask to stop and be frisked, and politely, you comply. For some airports you are a short sprint from the gate and/or the aircraft. If someone decided to not stop, off they go! -It's not as if they have to be buzzed through, one by one, by someone sitting securely on the other side.

Undoubtedly in this case, the operators plan was to penetrate deeper into the airport, when challenged,they terminated in option B.
In this case the security system worked, the threat was identified and it was intercepted or met. The problem is that that still resulted in 40 or so dead.

Airport design is fundamentally flawed when presented with security questions.
A sports Arena has a somewhat better model as they are designed to allow for the ingress of a large number of individually authenticated individuals (with the awareness that a portion may be actively trying to get in w/o paying)

With airports, that was never the design concern, all the security structures have been bolted on after the fact and it shows.
The greatest threat is copy cat attacks, luckily, the Al Qaeda terror threat is greatly overblown, otherwise we would be up s*t creek

[Snas]

The more stringent the security measures are, the greater the bottleneck of people waiting to pass through them. The greater the bottleneck the greater the number of humans gathered in a nice contained bunch = potential target.

Take a look at any check in area on a summer bank holiday around the lo-co desks for example, nearly all of whom have large cases with them.

I don’t pretend to know the answer but x-rays, body scanners and other gizmo’s aint it.

[Volume]

in the UK there's no security prior to entering a terminalIn Domodedovo there are security facilities at any entrance door. In the past there was no way to enter without sending your luggage (check-in + carry-on) and coat through the x-ray and walking through the magnetic detector. Since 2009 they are no longer in use... Instead they have installed the full body scanners in the new security area. Where by the way they already succeded to pick my wallet. Domodedowo is a security nightmare in the public areas, there are so many people around which are not passengers, the meet & greet area is always crowded, full of people making their living as unlicencenced taxi drivers with their private car.

[JCviggen]

If someone wants to blow themselves up and make casualties they can always succeed to matter what measures are in place. If not an airport then a metro station, train, even a bloody supermarket on a saturday morning has plenty of soft targets. For whatever reason anything associated with air travel gets more coverage so thats their primary target most of the time but plenty of other options. Nothing can be done about it.

Been to DME a few times, dont like it much as its too crowded. Am on a flight to SVO this afternoon though. No doubt security is going to be more annoying than usual.

[norodnik]

Security is a joke everywhere you go, the alternative is a Police State.

Fact:- blowing things, people, planes up is easy

The reason it doesn't happen every day is because it would lose its impact in the same way we couldn't give two hoots when we see dead people on the TV.

The IRA had 20 years of doing evil things but in the end you just waited for it to happen and got on with life. No big deal if you weren't hit and if you were then you had your 15 mins and no one cared after that.

If things start getting past "buggeration factor" then we'll see some action but, in our "civilised" society, it is unlikely to amount to much.

Bottom line: get used to it. Security will be what it needs to be to prevent student bombers with nothing better to do but will never be more than mildly effective against groups with funding and a cause that they're willing to die for.

As stated, a firework every so often gets much more attention then every firework in a display and that's what keeps us "statisically" safe.

[El Grifo]

Just a matter of time before it happens at an "airport near home"

The herd of elephants are breeding in the room and everyone turns a blind eye.

None so blind as those who will not see.

ElG.

[Hotel Tango]

Icare9

Go on, HT, give 'em all the clues to do a better job....
Sometimes the urge to put your name on a posting is done without thinking through the potential consequences....
Zip it and think, next time, please...

I was airing a genuine concern. Do you honestly think that they haven't yet thought of it? I suggest you think before having the urge to put your name on what was a totally ridiculous posting on your part!

[Ex Cargo Clown]

If they are going to do it then they will do it, whether it be an aircraft, terminal, train station, even a shopping centre, it's virtually impossible to stop it.

I'm pretty sure that I, along with many people on here and in the World in general have a means of causing mayhem and destruction, thankfully 99.999% of us are sensible enough not to want to.

It's finding that 0.001% that is the problem, and short of enforcing a police state, I'm not entirely sure how to make any system infallible.

[flash8]

As a frequent traveller through DME (and SVO 1/2) I have seen the security increase dramatically since the late 90's - and generally the level of diligence is high - although have seen some glaring exceptions - but perhaps I wasn't viewing the entire picture.

However entering the arrivals area is like a zoo (with all the competing taxi mafia) although better than SVO2 is still completely disorganized and chaotic.

Their are all sorts of odd characters wandering around, often seemingly outnumbering the passengers.

DME should have made a complete break from the SVO mentality set.

[Tankertrashnav]

Two Britons are among 35 people believed to have been killed along with 170 injured in an explosion caused by a dual suicide attack at Moscow's main commercial airport.



Rollinthunder - your comment is quite valid in a thread where news is breaking and further information is being added all the time. However, when The Times headline reads "Britons Killed in Moscow Terror". I despaired that journalism hasnt moved on from the "Fog in the channel - Europe isolated" days. Arent the other 34 deaths quite so important?

Meanwhile, on the inside pages is a horrific account of how Steven Greenoe managed twice to blag his way onto flights in the US after declaring that the dismantled weapons he was carrying were replicas, and then succeeded in getting them past UK customs, whence they found their way to criminal gangs in NW England. Hardly a triumph for either US or UK security.

[Capi_Cafre']

Go on, HT, give 'em all the clues to do a better job....
Sometimes the urge to put your name on a posting is done without thinking through the potential consequences....
Zip it and think, next time, please...


The chance that competent military minds, which the perpetrators of this bombing almost certainly were, could learn anything of consequence from reading anything posted here is simply too small to be measured.

[Aviaservice]

There are troublous times in Russia :( nobody takes responsibility so far, many people guess, it won't happen, like it was with action in the Moscow subway last spring.

[ILoadMyself]

When it's your time, it's your time.

Nobody can legislate for self-exploding nutters.


Male or Female.



The "Security Industry" will disagree.


I note that Vlad is blaming the management at the Airport.

[David75]

The chance that competent military minds, which the perpetrators of this bombing almost certainly were, could learn anything of consequence from reading anything posted here is simply too small to be measured.

I'd question the competence - the method/target has been obvious for a long time - they appear to have targeted the arrivals hall rather than the departures area - typically there would be more people in a condensed area in the departures/security screening area. It would suggest that they were targetting a particular person/group rather than a random attack.

[rubik101]

Not very long after 9/11 a thread was running, as you can well imagine, which discussed in detail the vulnerability of the passengers waiting to check-in and also queuing to go through security. Many of us have stood in those snaking queues with perhaps 300-400 people packed in close proximity, STN being one of the worst I suspect. Once our unprofiled terrorist reaches the middle of the crowd, pop, no more crowd. A similar situation appears to be the case here, only difference is it was in an arrival area.

There will never be a solution to this problem unless we stop people flying.
To prevent this do we move the security queue outside the terminal, down the road, outside the airport? If hundreds of people want to leave an airport at or close to opening time, being the busiest time, then there will be crowds of people. Same goes for the Tube stations and bus stations. Sadly, now that suicide bombers have the misguided notion that they will be martyrs in heaven the instant they press the button, these crowds will always be extremely vulnerable.

[WHBM]

To prevent this do we move the security queue outside the terminal, down the road, outside the airport? If hundreds of people want to leave an airport at or close to opening time, being the busiest time, then there will be crowds of people.
Why do you assume that there MUST be queues, of large numbers of people in close proximity ? The ONLY reason for queues is providing insufficient staff for security, immigration checks, etc. If there were more security resources, maybe even if only 50% of the security stations provided were actually staffed and in use, then there would be no queueing required. There are a significant number of airports around the world that manage to organise themselves in this way.

If a huge queue forms by opening time then the answer is painfully obvious - open earlier !

[Volume]

There will never be a solution to this problem unless we stop people flying.A good first step would be to stop converting a place intended to get people on board of an airplane into shopping malls and restaurants intended to make a maximum of money. Everytime an airport is "improved" the number of shops is increased, the distance to walk is increased, the time you have to plan to get to the plane is increased. (Last example I found extremely annoying is BRS, where they installed a large Duty-Free shop between security and waiting area, reducing the number of seats in the waiting area significantly, pushing the passengers into the restaurants. It once was a nice and simple airport, now it becomes the same as anywhere) Security is always second priority after profit. Most Airports make their money renting out shop and restaurant space, not serving airlines.

[Nubboy]

WHBM has stated the blindingly obvious. If security can detect, and contain the threat to the physical location where they're stoped, then these places HAVE to be of low people density. Keep the genuine passengers moving, and therefore the numbers of people queing down, until they've crossed into a secure area.

[Aviaservice]

When it's your time, it's your time.

Nobody can legislate for self-exploding nutters.


Agree. Medvedev is blaming the management of Domodedovo, but the sector which was blasted, controlled by Police, not security service of airport, officials said. I go to work every day through this sector, and i know, the police controls this zone.

[Nubboy]

It's the system, not the individual service. Any bottleneck prior to security screening has to be a potential target. Get rid of the bottlenecks and you instantly reduce the number of potential targets.

[SKS777FLYER]

And then there are MANPADS.
Google it.

[WHBM]

I do find it extraordinary that the Russian government is blaming the DME operators for this act. Security against terrorism is a national government responsibility, pure and simple, and it is up to them, through their agents in the security services and the police, and with appropriate guidance to airports, airlines and others, to control this as best they are able.

It comes just a few weeks after there was a huge blame against the airport operators for disorganisation after power failures. Prime Minister Putin cancelled the New Year holidays for all the staff of the Moscow airport operators until they got things back to normal again. With this level of political interference and blame, someone at the Moscow airports must have done something very bad to upset The Kremlin.

I do fear that the "seen to do something" approach will prevail, and Moscow will now have more queues, and more massing of travellers, while bureaucrats nitty-pick through everyone's documentation, exactly the opposite of what is required to minimise the target. But will the masses of mafia-controlled taxi touts who crowd the arrivals point at DME trying to charge US $300 for a trip to the city be eliminated ? Of course not.

[jcjeant]

Hi,

I do find it extraordinary that the Russian government is blaming the DME operators for this act. Security against terrorism is a national government responsibility, pure and simple, and it is up to them, through their agents in the security services and the police, and with appropriate guidance to airports, airlines and others, to control this as best they are able.:=

Gesticulations ... the russian intelligence services and FSB are the culprits

Terrorists must be not allowed to entry a airport (any in the world)
Intelligence ( by infiltration .. etc ..) collected in terrorists organizations is the key
When terrorist cross a airport entry door .. nobody can stop it ( even Putin with a Kalashnikov ) to make his job
Period

[tailstrikecharles]

Seriously, i dont know what the damn fuss is all about, really
http://en.rian.ru/images/16228/89/162288940.jpg

* Intelligence? check - there was, I understand, intelligence that indicated that there may be an attack on the airport area.

* Interception? Again, the couple were intercepted by patrols and detonated themselves (or were remotely triggered) during the challenge.

* Loss of life?
Regrettable but, compared with possible outcomes, best case scenario from a worst case event?

This to me was an aborted or failed attack.
Basically all they did was blow themselves up.

What if they were able to separate, with the first operator hitting a checkpoint and then the other, in the carnage/confusion, being able to penetrate further to God knows where?

To date, we have yet to see an actual ATTACK on an airport, another sign that this "terrorist under every bed" presentation from our governments is wildly overblown.

Seriously, who needs ManPADS? The approach vector for many airports often has you seeing passengers faces while you sit in nearby cafes, you could easily toss your waiter at landing planes.

[timtrb]

I seem to remember it wasn't that long ago that Glasgow airport was attacked when a jeep tried to drive into the departure building with propane bottles in the back.

I've also been on the receiving end of a mortar attack from the IRA at Heathrow's Terminal 4 which I can assure you was rather upsetting at the time!

[fdcg27]

You are right.
The areas of vulnerability are obvious.
If one wanted to attack people at an airport, there is plenty of opportunity to do so.
On recent travels, the security line itself represents an area of great vulnerability, as does the check-in area, as well as the baggage claim area, for which most airports I have flown through have no access control.
If someone is willing to trade their life or lives for a target, as the people who carried out the assault at Domodedovo were, they are then very hard to stop.
We will never have perfect security.
We can only rely upon intelligence to alert us to likely threats.
Think of all of the crowds in various venues who could be targeted by attackers.
Our cowardly attackers already have.
I call them cowards because an attack against a collection of unarmed and unassuming people is in no way brave or honorable, even though the assailants are willing to die in the attempt.

[rubik101]

WHBM states : Why do you assume that there MUST be queues, of large numbers of people in close proximity ? The ONLY reason for queues is providing insufficient staff for security, immigration checks, etc. If there were more security resources, maybe even if only 50% of the security stations provided were actually staffed and in use, then there would be no queueing required. There are a significant number of airports around the world that manage to organise themselves in this way.

If a huge queue forms by opening time then the answer is painfully obvious - open earlier !

So queues for check-in can be reduced to one person simply by having the same number of check-in desks as there are passengers at any particular time? Sadly, we live in a real, post 9/11 and 7/7, world here and now.

Have you been in T2 or T3 at LHR lately? The pre-queue for the check-in desks is sometimes several hundreds of people and every check-in desk is open. It is simply not feasible to reduce the queues any further unless we have several hundred check-in desks for each flight. Are you going to pay WHBM? Even T4 is not immume at times. As for airports where there is no queue, I surmise they have very few passengers compared to the busy airports we generally refer to when discussing this problem.

I presume this last was tongue in cheek, it being blindingly obvious that bringing forward the opening time will simply bring the formation of the same queue even earlier and the problem stays exactly the same. Just means the terrorist has to get up an hour or two earlier.

[JamesT73J]

It is an extremely difficult situation to manage. When someone is willing to kill themselves & others in an entirely indiscriminate manner, I'm not sure what can realistically be done.

Deeper surveillance and intelligence operations are probably the only way to go, but this means further intrusion of civil rights. Crowds are everywhere; if not an airport then a park, a bus station, or a shopping mall. If some Johnny wants to blow themselves up, what on earth can you do?

[stuckgear]

Have you been in T2 or T3 at LHR lately? The pre-queue for the check-in desks is sometimes sevel hundreds of people and every check-in desk is open. It is simply not feasible to reduce the queues any further unless we have several hundred check-in desks for each flight. Are you going to pay WHBM? Even T4 is not immume at times. As for airports where there is no queue, I surmise they have very few passengers compared to the busy airports we generally refer to when discussing this problem.



Further to that, the queues for security screening result in a couple of hundred people densely packed into a small area. The end result is that 'security' creates a security risk.

Airport security should never be the first line of defence, but the last. When it is, legislative security policy has failed. Miserably.

[pattern_is_full]

TailstrikeCharles:

"To date, we have yet to see an actual ATTACK on an airport...."

Lod Airport massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lod_airport_massacre)

As it happens, that event was before most modern security measures were in place, so the attackers were able to bring automatic weapons into the airport via an incoming flight, rather than the front door. But the concept has been "available" for nearly 40 years.

Also note the use of Japanese operatives to defeat "ethnic profiling" by security.

[rmac]

Well, as predicted by some on this thread.Yesterday afternoon came through DME on way home and there were at least 50 people, crammed in to a small space just inside the door waiting to put their bags throughtwo X-ray machines.Beautiful target, walk straight in off the street, in to the middle of the crowd and....Or just stand on the outside up against the large plate glass wall and detonate...glass shrapnel to go with the nails from close range.Anyone feels like making a "loose lips sink ships comment" at this point, please stow it. Terrorists will be able to make walk and drive by assessments all on their own without anyone noticing.

[WHBM]

Have you been in T2 or T3 at LHR lately? The pre-queue for the check-in desks is sometimes several hundreds of people and every check-in desk is open. It is simply not feasible to reduce the queues any further unless we have several hundred check-in desks for each flight. Are you going to pay WHBM?
I really do get disappointed at discussions which go along the lines of there only ever being two possible answers to handle a situation : (a) As it is done now, or (b) Some ridiculously over-hyped extremity of change. Such as needing "several hundred check-in desks for each flight".

Do you feel that the regular holding and inbound delays of incoming flights to Heathrow can only be overcome by having "several hundred runways" ?

The bulk of passenger queueing for check-in, security, etc is overcome within the existing hard resources of desks etc, by just staffing up what is already there instead of absolute minimalist staff levels. You can have 4 security points staffed with 20-minute queues, whereas having 6 of them staffed will eliminate almost all of this at all times. Anyone who has studied Queueing Theory at university can explain the calculation. So this security hazard is brought principally by beancounters determined to shave yet another 5% off costs year after year.

A further cause of the hazard is management, and staff, fixation with "targets" nowadays, such as "90% of passengers must get through security within 20 minutes". After a while this 20 minutes becomes a target in people's minds rather than a limit. The management know where the 20 minute line typically is in the queue, and as long as people are joining the queue just inside that point, they now feel it is Job Done. The staff themselves will be hanging back looking on, and only when the queue once again reaches back to the 20 minute point will they be told by the supervisor to go in and open up another station.

By the way, I haven't been "in T2 at LHR lately", and nor do I think have many other people. It was closed a couple of years ago and is now demolished.

[Hipennine]

A couple of comments on check-in queues:

1/ Experience of checking in on Easyjet flights (unless for eg the baggage belt breaks down) at Easy bases, always seems to involve short queues with a very short dwell time at the actual check-in desk - so how do they do it ? Note however, that at none-bases, the check-in lines can be just as long as for charter flights. And why does it take longer by and large to check-in charters vs scheduled ?

2/ Not airline, but transport related: Swiss Federal Railways have a simple rule at main ticketing offices - if there are more than three pax groups at any ticket window, they open another one, and most of the time, they actually achieve that.

Finally, getting back to the Domodedovo situation, I can remember the old days at Dublin, when there were always several Gardai at every entrance to the terminal building who gave you a quick scan with some electronic device. As far as I can tell, the purpose was to catch bombers looking to bomb the building itself, not get on the plane. The perceived threat was somebody (not necessarily suicidal) aiming to bring an explosive device into the terminal to cause mayhem there. Airport security now seems to be 100% focussed on the suicide bomber aiming to do mid-air mischief, and has forgotten about the more traditional terrorist aim of causing mayhem in crowds.