Russian Transport Official Sacked in Wake of Deadly Bombing

As Moscow held a day of mourning for the victims of a deadly airport bombing, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev today fired a top transportation official and criticized police who patrol transit centers as "passive."

Mourners lit candles and brought flowers to the main airport where 35 people were killed by a suicide bomber Monday afternoon, and services were held in the capital's churches, according to reports.

Medvedev sacked Maj. Gen. Andrei Alexeyev, the head of the transport police for the region that includes Moscow, The Associated Press reported. The president criticized transport police, saying, "The police that are at the large transport centers, in airports, at railway stations, take an absolutely passive position."

Medvedev told his Interior Ministry to "shake up the entire transport police service," The Guardian reported. The AP said the interior minister fired the head of the transport police division at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, along with two officers.

Medvedev acted shortly before leaving for Davos, Switzerland, to attend the World Economic Forum, hoping to convince the business world that Russia can defeat terrorism and remains a safe place for investment, reports said.

The president was supposed to arrive Tuesday night but shortened his trip and was expected to spend just a few hours there today to make the opening speech before returning home, Agence France-Presse reported.

"In connection with the tragedy, the program of my visit to Davos has been considerably cut," Medvedev told one of Russia's top business newspapers, Vedomosti, AFP reported.

Medvedev didn't want to cancel his trip to Davos "because it is a very important global venue to present our position," he told the newspaper earlier.

The bombing, believed to be carried out as a suicide attack, killed eight foreigners. A revised list released by authorities say they are two Austrians, two Tajiks and one person each from Britain, Germany, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, the AP reported.

All but one of the 35 people killed has been identified, AFP said, and 116 people were still hospitalized today.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, though suspicion has focused on Islamist separatists from Chechnya or elsewhere in the Caucasus region, who have been fighting Russia for more than 15 years, the AP said.

The bombers have been portrayed in Russian media as a couple with a bomb either strapped to one of them or in a suitcase.

A mass-circulation newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets, said those who organized Monday's devastating attack planned a New Year's Eve bombing near Red Square, but the plot was foiled when the would-be suicide bomber accidentally blew herself up, according to Reuters and AFP.

"A terrorist attack on Moscow had been in the works since November," the paper said, relying on unidentified security officials, Reuters said.

The explosive may have gone off prematurely when the bomber received a text message to her cell phone that set it off, the paper said.

Monday's bombing has demoralized Russians, coming after suicide bombings in the Moscow subway system that killed 40 people in March.

"It has already been happening for so many years, and there is a feeling it will never end," Inna Guliyants, who attended a church service for the day of mourning, told the AP.