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Sometimes it seems as if terrorism in Russia is a phenomenon of the North Caucasus. But Moscow has been hit almost as hard over the last five years:
Moscow�s police chief Col. Gen. Vladimir Pronin has said that 354 people died in terrorist attacks in Moscow over the past five years, the Interfax news agency reports.
�From 1999 to 2004, we have had 13 terrorist attacks in Moscow with 354 killed and 647 injured. The organizers of nine terrorist attacks have either been arrested or their identities confirmed,� Pronin said at the Terrorism and Electronic Mass Media conference in Gelendzhik.
I haven’t done the math, but I assume that Pronin is including the two airliners that were hijacked last year in his calculations.
Update: Check the comments below for three attempts to work out the numbers, including mine. Each of us came up with a different figure to Pronin, each of us came up with a higher figure than Pronin.
Depressingly, I think these figures are a conservative under-estimate, and don’t include the hijacked planes. A brief and incomplete look over my records suggests the following death toll as a result of terrorism in Moscow over that period:
approx 200 deaths- the two Sept 99 apartment bombings in Moscow
11 deaths – 8 Aug 2000 bomb in underpass
129 deaths (official figure) – Oct 2002 “Nord Ost” theatre siege,
15 deaths – 6 July 2003 – suicide bomb at music festival
at least 6 deaths – 9 Dec 2003 – suicide bomb near State Duma building
at least 39 deaths – 6 Feb 2004 – suicide bomb on Moscow Metro
at least 10 deaths – 31 Aug 2004 – suicide bomb outside Metro station
This gives a total of at least 400 killed, and doesn’t take acccount of the probable underreporting of the real number of people killed at Nord-Ost, at least, which some sources put at 170+. All most depressing.
I tried to do the math as well but got more questions than answers with around 392 (counting only the 2 hostages killed in the moscow theater by the terrorists, not those who died of the gas).
Very depressing. I’ve just done a count, based on the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, which totals 469 fatalities.
(The full figures I’m working from are posted – without any formatting, sorry – at the end of this comment. I drilled down to the Moscow region using the map, in case you want to replicate my working).
This figure doesn’t include the airplane hijackings, which would add another 90. Three of these were assassinated, one was a suicide bomber who only managed to kill herself, and one died in custody of a “suspected” heart attack. Even removing these from the count, and the other terrorists who died in the attacks – lets say 50 of them – still only takes the total down to 414, which is still 60 higher than Pronin’s count.
So, I have no idea where Pronin is getting his figures from. And, I have to say I’m very curious as to why he seems to be under-reporting the number of fatalities. The intent of his revelation was presumably to demonstrate the threat that Moscow faces, so why under-report. If, on the other hand, he was attempting to intentionally under-report the figures in order to reassure people, I’m puzzled as to why he would bother when the variance between the actual count, and the real count is (relatively) low.
Here, entirely without formatting,the figures:
Year Incident Fatalities
1999 Apartment bombing 95 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=16591
1999 Apartment bombing 121 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=16599
2000 Pedestrian underpass 12 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=16984
2002 Theatre hijack 162 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=13618
2003 Female suicide bomber 1 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=16367
2003 2nd female suicide bomber 17 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=16476
2003 Black widows 6 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=17703
2004 Metro bomb 40 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=17994
2004 Former Chechen PM Assassinated 1 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=18973
2004 Forbes editor assassinated 1 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=18978
2004 Lane editor assassinated 1 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=19188
2004 Subway bomb 11 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=19320
2004 Someone caught trying to set a bomb, died in prison 1 http://www.tkb.org/Incident.jsp?incID=19372