Theme: Bombings

One month after Vladimir Putin was made prime minister, an explosion levelled a nine-story apartment building on Moscow’s outskirts. The predawn blast on September 9, 1999, reduced the building to a smoking pile of rubble, killing more than 100. A second building, less than 6 kilometres away, was rocked by an explosion on September 13, killing 119. Days earlier, a car bomb exploded in a small town bordering the war-ravaged region of Chechnya, where reignited fighting was already spilling into neighbouring regions. That blast, outside the apartment building in the town of Buynaksk, killed dozens. It was followed seven days later by a truck bomb that destroyed a nine-story building in another southern city, Volgodonsk, killing 17.

Events