St. Petersburg subway explosion kills 10

UPDATE: Russia investigators confirmed Tuesday that a suicide bomber was behind Monday’s deadly attack on the St. Petersburg subway, while the Kyrgyzstan State Committee for National Security identified a suspect as Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen either 21 and 22 years old. It’s not clear whether Dzhalilov was the suicide bomber. Meanwhile, Russia’s health minister raised the death toll from 11 to 14 and said 49 people are still hospitalized.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Monday afternoon attack, which came while Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting the city, but the Interfax news agency on Monday said authorities believe the suspect was linked to radical Islamic groups and carried the explosive device onto the train in a backpack.

UPDATE (04/03/17, 4:51 p.m.): Police raised the death toll to 11 and began investigating a bombing on a subway in St. Petersburg, Russia, as an act of terror today. No militant group has claimed responsibility for the explosion.

Authorities also confirmed they found another bomb and defused it at a different subway station after the first explosion around 2:30 p.m. News reports initially said police were searching for two suspects, but the Interfax news agency later said police suspected the blast was the work of a suicide bomber.

OUR EARLIER REPORT (04/03/17, 10:35 a.m.): An explosion on a St. Petersburg, Russia, subway train killed at least 10 people today and injured 50 others. Another bomb was later found and deactivated at a separate subway station, the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee reported.

President Vladimir Putin, who was in the city to meet with the Belorussian president, said investigators did not know for sure whether a terror attack caused the blast, which happened on a train as it traveled between two stations near the center of the city. Maxim Liksutov, Moscow’s deputy mayor, told Interfax that Moscow authorities were tightening security on the subway there in response.

Photographs posted by social media users showed people lying on the floor outside a train with a mangled door. The explosion happened around 2:30 p.m. local time. Traffic in the area came to a standstill, and children were told to remain at school since parents might not be able to pick them up, according to The Moscow Times.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.