What did little to calm the deep anxiety in the capital.

Almost every house organized its own defense committee. Locally, an atmosphere of Soviet-era suspicion flourished, with residents informing the police about the activities of their neighbors.

Russia's ethnic minorities - especially dark-skinned people from the Caucasus - are bearing the brunt of this hysteria. While most Russian politicians brand Chechens for these attacks, the police concentrate their attention on persons with a Caucasian appearance - raising increasing concern among Moscow's human rights organizations.

Are they the organizers? [Khattab and Basaev - brief characteristics]

"La Repubblica", Rome

10.09.99. Column "Russia in Chaos"

Moscow, the nightmare of terrorism. More than a hundred buried under the stone walls of the blown-up house (Alberto Stabile)

Hour of misfortune: 00:01.
Victims: dead - about 30, wounded - about 100, missing - 70-80 people may still be under the ruins.
Hypotheses:
* Gas - the disaster could have been caused by an explosion of a domestic gas installation;
* Terrorist attack - Chechen integralists who would have placed 200 kg of TNT in the building;
* Pyrotechnic materials - packed into an apartment and exploded by accident.

...Only in the evening did the security services decide to admit that the power of the explosion was "equivalent" to 200 kg of TNT and that, having designated a "circle of suspects", it even became possible to develop an identification system. Nevertheless, pending the study of the "explosion crater", the possibility of an accident is not being ruled out.

The security services also do not seem to believe a phone call received around noon by the independent agency Interfax. Someone with a conspicuous Caucasian accent (but attention to accents means little to nothing) called for the defense not so much of the motherland as of the right to the terrifying explosion, linking the tragedy of last night in Moscow with the car bomb that last Saturday killed 62 people in a house of Russian military personnel in Buynaksk, Dagestan.

"What happened in Moscow and in Buynaksk is our response to the bombings of villages in Chechnya and Dagestan," said the caller. [theater of military operations in the Caucasus, and now - in Moscow]

...a working-class district, inhabited mainly by workers of the "Moskvich" car plant. [...] ... they talk about another explosion at a lacquer warehouse. But why, one must ask, exactly here, on this anonymous periphery?... But why not in the houses of the powerful, not in the restaurants and shops of the center... here, where it is easiest to strike, among poor people, the most vulnerable to the effects of all types of war.

11.09.99. Anti-terrorists fear other bombs. Security agencies are studying a series of armed interventions to limit the possibility of new attacks (Alberto Stabile)

While the toll of the slaughter was fixed at the terrible figures of 90 dead and 47 wounded, some of the latter in hopeless condition, they finally begin to understand how the slaughter occurred, but there is no clear understanding of why, or because of whom the current state of affairs has arisen. The facts of the announcement of the arrest of two persons, according to yesterday's statement by the Interfax agency, do not yet serve to clarify. Chatter on this matter is limited to the hypothesis that two suspects could have a "connection with commercial structures that occupied the lower floor of the destroyed house". What type of connection is unknown, and it is also unknown why the structures in question dealt with lacquer, polish, and substances that are flammable but theoretically not explosive.