Rebel leader claims airport attack

Rebel leader Doku Umarov said last night that he had ordered the suicide bomb attack at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport that killed 36 people and injured 180 last month.

Umarov is Russia's most wanted terrorist, and is believed to be hiding in the North Caucasus, where Russian troops are fighting an Islamic insurgency. The rebel leader, 46, made the claim in a 16-minute video address posted on a rebel website. Umarov calls himself the Emir of the Caucasus and wants to set up an independent Islamic state in the region, which embraces Chechnya, Dagestan and other nearby territories. He described the attack on the airport on 24 January as a "special operation" directed against the Russian people and its prime minister, Vladimir Putin. Umarov criticised Russia's policy in the Caucasus and said that more attacks were being planned.

An earlier video, released over the weekend, featured Umarov and a man he introduced as Seifullah, whom Umarov said was being sent to Moscow to carry out an attack. Russian media have speculated that the man might have been 20-year-old Magomed Yevloyev, from Ingushetia, a troubled region that borders Chechnya. Sources in Russia's security services have suggested that Yevloyev was the suicide bomber in the airport attack.