Yesterday just before noon four bombs went off in Dnipropetrovs'k along the tram line on Karl Marx street, the main drag. Kyiv Post carried the story here and updated here.
Twenty-nine or thirty people were hospitalized, including nine children. Twenty-Two remain in hospital.
The bombs were placed in concrete trash containers located along the street at tramway stops; the concrete acted as shrapnel. The fourth bomb was located and people cleared out of the way before it exploded
President Yanukovych is in the city and has ordered "security measures"; instructing "Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka, Security Service Chief
Ihor Kalinin, and Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko to take
measures to find those behind a series of blasts in Dnipropetrovsk and
bring them to trial".
Yanukovych also ordered to set up a task force lead by the prosecutor general to investigate the incident at the site. Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/126779/#ixzz1tLdcaqHP
Whether or not they find anyone or anyone is brought to trial let alone convicted will depend on who did it and who is their their "roof", in local slang. The government will call it a terrorist act and no doubt clamp down further on civil liberties, there being ample precedent for that in other countries. However it was not likely terrorists in the Islamist sense but more likely home-grown mafia sending a warning to someone in the Dnipropetrovs'k City bureaucracy.
It is a larger repeat of a similar incident last fall. An unidentified explosive device detonated near a bus stop in downtown
Dnipropetrovs'k in the early hours of November 16. The bomb was planted
in a concrete trash container. A Ukrainian man was killed in the
explosion. Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/126783/#ixzz1tLesA69m
However, one former top law enforcement official expressed doubts over the terrorism claim.
“This doesn’t look like a terrorist attack, but more like a criminal act
stemming from an economic dispute,” said Oleksandr Skipalsky, a former
Security Service of Ukraine lieutenant general and ex-head of the
military intelligence department of the Defense Ministry. Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/126772/#ixzz1tLfoLkaD
A businessman was murdered in the City a couple weeks ago and two or three years ago the Chief Prosecutor was gunned down, likely for favouring the wrong clique. Dnipropetrovs'k is a tough enough city on its own but with the Donetsk crowd allegedly trying to move in on every profitable business in the country, it has become even rougher.
Aljazeera has more information here.
What a thoroughly delightful way to ruin everybodys' weekend. May you keep calm and cary on.
ReplyDeleteBlessings and Bear hugs.
I just came in from Rob-bear's blog. May I add to what Rob-bear said... I take my safety for granted, though not my freedom with what is happening in the States of late. I cannot imagine going through what you do, let alone being able to write coherently. I wish you all safety. I hope your civil liberties are not further limited. It is an increasingly volatile, dangerous world, it seems to me.
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps we are simply more aware of the truth, if we care to look.
Thanks RB and JLS, appreciate your concerns for the safety of all in Dnipro. Tanya lived there for many years. We lived there for one year before moving back to ZV which is 130 km west. We go there fairly frequently and have friends there all of whom are safe. We are far freer than in Russia though there has been some progress there lately. Corruption in both countries is the number one problem and holding back economic development for the "99%".
ReplyDeleteBest wishes to the city and its inhabitants in the wake of this mess.
ReplyDeleteI too had assumed that the attacks were rooted in terrorism, but I hadn't considered organized crime. If the latter is the culprit, you are right to doubt what law enforcement can/will do to those responsible.
In the 1960's I attended a Mafia trial in Sicily: When the judge read off the list of the accused crimes he stood up and proudly bowed to the audience.
ReplyDeletethe Ol'Buzzard
Thanks, Ahab. If it is just petty crooks engaged in extortion they will be found and fixed. However if it is serious stuff, it depends who is on whose side and whether or not they have gone too far and will be abandoned by their "cover".
DeleteOl'B, that must have been an interesting trial. The Mafioso had "class". did he get off and who was murdered as a result of the trial
It's a crazy world we live in. Around here we get the occasional street gangs randomly shooting people. Don't know if we really have a "mafioso" here just your run of the mill embezzlers and scam artists. Nothing very messy to report here except a few mental cases.
ReplyDelete