October 2013 Volgograd bus bombing

At approximately 14:01 on 21 October 2013, Naida Sirazhudinovna Asiyalova (), a 30-year-old fugitive from the Republic of Dagestan, boarded a bus in the Krasnoarmeysky district of Volgograd. The passengers on this bus were predominantly students in their late teens and early twenties returning home from classes at Volgograd State University. According to eyewitnesses, Asiyalova boarded the bus in Volgograd city centre, taking a seat towards the rear of the vehicle and silently looking out of the window as the bus made two further stops before detonating her suicide belt at 14:05, killing herself and seven others and injuring 41—several severely. Investigation No individuals or terrorist organization claimed responsibility for the attack. Although initial reports speculated the explosion had been caused by an "unidentified explosive device", possibly a gas leak, eyewitness testimony and physical evidence recovered from the site of the explosion enabled investigators to quickly determine the blast had been caused by a female suicide bomber wearing a green hijab who, according to one survivor, had been "looking out the window, acting calm [and] not drawing any attention to herself" immediately before detonating her device. An identity card recovered within the bus confirmed the identity of the suicide bomber as 30-year-old Naida Asiyalova and within hours of the explosion, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee of Russia named her husband, Dmitry Sokolov, as a prime suspect in the attack. The explosive device consisted of two blocks of TNT weighing between 500 and 600 grams and two grenades (one of which failed to detonate in the explosion). In addition, Asiyalova had numerous shards of metal, screws, and bolts on her possession to maximize the devastation of the blast. Although one grenade had exploded when Asiyalova detonated her suicide belt, one unexploded grenade was discovered beneath the bus. As Asiyalova was found to have a ticket to travel to the capital on her possession at the time of the explosion, investigators believe the suicide attack was originally intended to take place at an unknown location in Moscow, although for unknown reasons, Asiyalova chose to detonate her device upon the bus. On the evening of the bombing, authorities within the Volgograd Oblast declared three days of mourning, commencing 22 October. The same day, the People's Republic of China condemned the bombing. ==Perpetrators==

Asiyalova Asiyalova was born in the Gunibsky District of Dagestan in the North Caucasus on 25 October 1982. She was raised in the capital city of Makhachkala, and relocated to Moscow to work as a store clerk at age 23. Shortly after relocating to Moscow, Asiyalova married a Turkish man, although the couple divorced by mutual consent shortly thereafter. She first encountered her future husband and co-conspirator in the Volgograd bus bombing, Dmitry Sokolov, on a Russian dating website in 2010 when she was a 27-year-old divorcée and he an 18-year-old recent convert to Islam. At the time of Asiyalova's death, she is known to have suffered from a fatal bone disease which had begun causing her jawbone to recede. Sokolov Sokolov (b. 10 July 1992) was an ethnic Russian born into a family of Orthodox Christians. His family originally hailed from Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, although his family relocated to Moscow when he was in his teens. He is believed to have converted to Islam while studying in the capital and shortly before he met his future wife in 2010. Following his conversion to Islam, Sokolov adopted the name Abdul Jabbar and began studying Arabic. Prior to Sokolov's marriage to Asiyalova, he is not known to have displayed any traits of extremism. However, in the months following their marriage, he converted to a more radical version of the faith. He was reported missing by his family in July 2012 after he failed to return home from the Arabic language courses he attended at a Moscow mosque. Although his mother, Olga, had subsequently appealed for information as to the whereabouts of her son and daughter-in-law on the Russian TV series Wait For Me, she received no response. It is believed that following their marriage, Asiyalova persuaded Sokolov to convert to a more radical form of Islam—Wahhabism. She is also known to have persuaded him to join Islamic militants in her native Dagestan, where he became a prominent explosives expert. In the months prior to the Volgograd bus bombing, Sokolov had been linked to two separate, non-fatal explosions which had injured 29 people. Consequently, by October 2013, both he and his wife were on a list of Russia's most wanted fugitives. ==Death of Dmitry Sokolov==

On 15 November 2013, Russian security forces located Dmitry Sokolov (then aged 21) in a private house in a village close to Makhachkala, Dagestan. Although authorities urged Sokolov and four other insurgents also hiding within the building to surrender—at one stage allowing Sokolov's mother to speak with her son via telephone in efforts to persuade him to end the siege peacefully—Sokolov and his accomplices refused to surrender to authorities. However, via mutual agreement with special forces, the woman and her 18-month-old daughter whose house the insurgents were hiding in were allowed to safely leave the premises during negotiations. Prior to his death at the hands of Russian security services, Sokolov admitted within the telephone negotiations that he had constructed the suicide belt used in the Volgograd bus bombing with his wife's willing participation. He and his fellow insurgents were killed in a gunfight with the security services the following day. The Russian security forces suffered no casualties in the offensive. ==Victims==

• Viktoria Koneva (20) • Maksim Letkov (16) • Kirill Litvinenko (18) • Yelena Mikhailova (29) • Maria Popadinets (18) • Yulia Prikhodchenko (22) • Tatyana Vereshchagina (59) ==See also==