Teenage "black widow" behind Moscow bomb

Russian investigators say they have identified one of the suicide bombers who carried out attacks on the Moscow metro on Monday as the 17-year-old widow of a Caucasus fighter. Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova was responsible for the first of the two blasts that killed 39 people, they believe.

Reuters

Abdurakhmanova was the wife of Umalat Magomedov, a Dagestani Islamist rebel who was killed last year in a special operation, the Russian daily paper Kommersant reports.

It is unclear whether the couple were officially married. Abdurakhmanova comes from the Khasavyurtovsky district of Dagestan and met Magomedov at the age of 16 after she contacted rebels on the internet.

The Russian investigators believe that she was responsible for the first of the two bombs that killed 39 people. They have released photographs of the severed heads of the two bombers.

The second bomber has not been officially identified, but some say she was a 20-year-old Chechen woman called Markha Ustarkhanova, the widow of Said-Emin Khizriyev, a rebel from the Chechen town of Gudermes.

Khizriyev was killed last year as he prepared to try to assassinate the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Ustarkhanova’s parents say she went missing last year after contacting rebels on the internet and only got in touch later to say she had married Khizriyev.