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today at Moscow's biggest airport, Domodedovo, Russian officials said. A spokeswoman for the healthcare ministry said a further 20 people injured in the bombing were in a critical condition in hospital. Sources said three men were suspected of plotting the explosion, which had the power of 7kg of TNT.

The attack is the most deadly in Russia since last March when two female suicide bombers from Russia's Mulsim-majority Dagestan region set off explosives on the subway system, killing 40 people. It was Moscow's worst attack for six years.

Russian investigators said today's explosion took place in the lounge area next to the international departure zone and close to the Asia cafe. Another source said "dozens" had been injured.

A traveller identified as Viktor told the Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei radio station that he heard the bang from outside the airport, where he was waiting for a car. "There was an explosion, a bang. Then I saw a policeman covered in fragments of flesh and all bloody. He was shouting, 'I've survived! I've survived!'"

Mark Green, a British Airways passenger who had just arrived at the airport, told the BBC he heard the explosion as he was leaving the terminal.

"Literally, it shook you," he said. "As we were putting the bags in the car a lot of alarms ... were going off and people started flowing out of the terminal, some of whom were covered in blood. One gentleman had a pair of jeans on that was ripped and his thigh from his groin to his knee was covered in blood."

The airport is used by numerous international carriers including BA and BMI, which flies four times daily between London and Moscow. Domodedovo is connected to the centre of the capital by a high-speed train and is the airport of choice for Moscow's large expatriate population.

In a Twitter message, the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, vowed to track down and punish those responsible. "Security will be strengthened at large transport hubs," he wrote. "We mourn the victims of the terrorist attack at Domodedovo airport. The organizers will be tracked down and punished."

Witnesses said there was heavy smoke over the airport and the entry from the arrivals zone had been closed. "There is the smell of smoke at that section. No

announcements have been made yet through loudspeakers," passengers reported via Twitter. Others Twitters users, citing emergency staff at the scene, said up to 70 people may have been killed.

Investigators said they believed the explosion was caused a suicide bomber. "The preliminary reports suggest that the explosive device was activated at the international arrivals section by a suicide bomber," one source said. Several international planes were diverted to Sheremetyevo airport, with Domodedovo temporarily closed to incoming planes.

Russia's security agencies received a warning ahead of today's blast of a possible attack on a Moscow airport, news agencies reported. "We received information that in one of Moscow's airports a terrorist attack could possibly take place," – a source told RIA Novosti.

The source said police had been searching for three suspects. The suicide bomber appears to have entered the building unchallenged, taken the lift up to the second floor and then blown himself up. Two others monitored the explosion and then left, the official suggested.

Russian opposition bloggers demanded to know why security measures had not been enhanced at airports in response to the tipoff. Oleg Kozlovsky, an opposition activist, tweeted: "If the FSB [Russian's domestic anti-terrorism agency] knew about the warning a week ago, why didn't they check passengers arriving at airports?"

Another source told Interfax: "According to intelligence, three men may have been involved in organising the explosion, men who have been living in the region of the capital for some time. They have been put on the wanted list."

He said the three suspects were believed to be militants from Russia's North Caucasus. They allegedly had connections to a woman who blew herself up in Moscow on 31 December and another who was later arrested in Volgograd. "It can't be ruled out that one of the three blew himself up at Domodedovo," the source said.

A team of investigators began sifting through video footage from security cameras at Domodedovo and requested a list of mobile phone users in this area. CCTV cameras are installed both inside the airport and in the surrounding area.

Security has been stepped up across Moscow, with police put on high alert at all transport hubs.

The attack is likely to be blamed on Islamist radicals, and is another grim sign that terrorism has returned to the Russian capital. The Kremlin has repeatedly insisted the situation in Russia's North Caucasus has stabilised after two brutal federal wars against Chechen rebels in 1994– 1996 and 1999–2005. The airport bombing and last year's metro attack on the metro suggest this claim is a fairytale.

Across its mountainous southern frontier the Russian state is fighting a group of determined and well-organised insurgents who want to establish a pan-Islamic caliphate. The republics of Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan – where the insurgents operate – are gripped by civil war, with daily attacks on police and local security forces.

The Kremlin has responded to this threat to its integrity with characteristic brutality. It has launched a series of special operations. Last year its special forces killed Said Buryatsky, a senior rebel and Russian-born Islamist convert, in a village in Ingushetia.

Another insurgent leader, Egyptian-born Saif Islam, was killed in Dagestan. These killings may have prompted the two women to set off to Moscow last spring on a revenge suicide mission.

In 2008 Doku Umarov, Chechnya's most senior surviving rebel leader, promised to take his violent campaign to Russia's towns and cities. He indicated he had reconstituted the suicide brigades used to devastating effect during the second Chechen war – which saw the bombing of the Moscow metro in 2004, as well as the hijacking of a Moscow theatre and the siege of Beslan, a school in south Ossetia in which 300 people, mainly children, died. It appears that the rebels have again demonstrated a capacity to strike deep into the heart of the Russian state.

1.Find and read more information about terrorism in Russia and continue the timeline with other facts.

2.Compare the results of your findings with your partner’s.

Timeline: terrorism in Russia

Nearly 300 people have been killed in suspected Chechen attacks in Russia over the past year. Here is a chronology of the most significant strikes since Russian forces were sent back into the republic in 1999.

August 31, 1999

A bomb explodes in an underground shopping centre just outside the Kremlin walls, injuring 20. Officials call it an act of terrorism but do not link it specifically to Chechen militants.

September 1999

In a devastating series of attacks, bombs destroy apartment blocks in the Russian towns of Moscow, Buynaksk and Volgodonsk, killing more than 200 people. Moscow blames the Chechens, who in turn accuse Russia's secret services. In response to the attacks, then-prime minister Vladimir Putin sends Russian troops back into Chechnya for the first time since 1997.

August 8, 2000

A bomb explodes in a busy Moscow underpass, killing eight people and injuring 50.

October 23, 2002

Around 50 Chechen rebels seize a Moscow theatre and hold about 800 people hostage in a three-day siege. Most of the rebels and around 120 hostages are killed when Russian forces use gas to storm the building.

December 27, 2002

A suicide lorry-bomb attack destroys the Grozny headquarters of Chechnya's Moscow-backed government, killing 72 people.

May 12, 2003

Sixty people are killed in a suicide bombing on a government compound in northern Chechnya. Two days later, a woman blows herself up at a religious ceremony in the republic, killing 18 people.

June 5, 2003

A female suicide attacker detonates a bomb near a bus carrying soldiers and civilians to a military airfield in Mozdok, a major staging point for Russian troops in Chechnya, killing at least 16 people

.

July 5, 2003

Two women suicide bombers kill 14 people when they blow themselves up at an open-air rock festival at Moscow's Tushino airfield. Sixty people are injured, and a 15th victim dies later.

August 1, 2003

Fifty people, including Russian soldiers wounded in Chechnya, are killed in a truck-bomb attack on a military hospital in Mozdok, North Ossetia.

December 5, 2003

Forty-four people are killed when a suicide bomber attacks a train in southern Russia.

December 9, 2003

A suicide bombing in central Moscow kills at least five people.

UNIT II.

TYPES OF TERRORISM

Warm-up Activities

1.Look at the pictures. What can you say about them?

2.Do you think terrorism is completely random, or there is a purpose to this type of violence?

3.What means do the terrorists use in their attacks? Do they have a goal?

READING TASK: You are going to read a newspaper article about types of terrorism. What are the different types characterized by? What are the reasons of terrorist activity according to the article?

Terrorism has been around for as long as people can remember, but for the past ten years there's been a dramatic rise in activity. Terrorists use murder, kidnapping, hijacking, and bombings to pursue a political agenda. Terrorism happens all over the world, in every way, shape and form. There are many types of terrorism and terrorists with many different purposes. The primary reason for terrorist actions is to force a change in their nation's government.

If terrorists are not satisfied with their government's political positions, they may end up taking the matters into their own hands. Another reason for terrorist acts is because of hate towards a race, nationality, or religion. In recent years, terrorism seems to be at a new high and attacks are more violent than in the past. Many groups operate within a single nation or region. Others have branches and operations in many countries. Because terrorists generally cannot match the strength of conventional military forces, they often rely on guerrilla warfare.

New groups are sprouting all over the place and terrorism being so secretive and having no forewarning, governments from all over the world have form alliances to combat terrorism and terror cells in hope of thwarting any further threats. As a civilized society we cannot resort to terrorism. Everyone has a responsibility to take action. Everyone in the world needs to unite to combat terrorism.

Researchers in the United States began to distinguish different types of terrorism in the 1970s, following a decade in which both domestic and international groups flourished. By that point, modern groups had began to use techniques such as hijacking, bombing, diplomatic kidnapping and assassination to assert their demands and, for the first time, they appeared as real threats to Western democracies, in the view of politicians, law makers, law enforcement and researchers. They began to distinguish different types of terrorism as part of the larger effort to understand how to counter and deter it.

Bioterrorism

Bioterrorism refers to the intentional release of toxic biological agents to harm and terrorize civilians, in the name of a political or other cause. The U.S. Center for Disease Control has classified the viruses, bacteria and toxins that could be used in an attack. Category A Biological Diseases are those most likely to do the most damage. They include:

Anthrax (Bacillus anthracis)

Botulism (Clostridium botulinum toxin) The Plague (Yersinia pestis)

Smallpox (Variola major) Tularemia (Francisella tularensis)

Hemorrahagic fever, due to Ebola Virus or Marburg Virus

Cyberterrorism

Cyberterrorists use information technology to attack civilians and draw attention to their cause. This may mean that they use information technology, such as computer systems or telecommunications, as a tool to orchestrate a traditional attack. More often, cyberterrorism refers to an attack on information technology itself in a way that would radically disrupt networked services. For example, cyberterrorists could disable networked emergency systems or hack into networks housing critical financial information. There is wide disagreement over the extent of the existing threat by cyberterrorists.

Ecoterrorism

Ecoterrorism is a recently coined term describing violence in the interests of environmentalism. In general, environmental extremists sabotage property to inflict economic damage on industries or actors they see as harming animals or the natural environment. These have included fur companies, logging companies and animal research laboratories, for example.

Nuclear terrorism

"Nuclear terrorism" refers to a number of different ways nuclear materials might be exploited as a terrorist tactic. These include attacking nuclear facilities, purchasing nuclear weapons, or building nuclear weapons or otherwise finding ways to disperse radioactive materials.

Narcoterrorism

Narcoterrorism has had several meanings since its coining in 1983. It once denoted violence used by drug traffickers to influence governments or prevent

government efforts to stop the drug trade. In the last several years, narcoterrorism has been used to indicate situations in which terrorist groups use drug trafficking to fund their other operations.

Nationalist terrorism

Nationalist terrorists seek to form a separate state for their own national group, often by drawing attention to a fight for "national liberation" that they think the world has ignored. This sort of terrorism has been among the most successful at winning international sympathy and concessions. Experts say that nationalist terror groups have tended to calibrate their use of violence, using enough to rivet world attention but not so much that they alienate supporters abroad or members of their base community. Nationalist terrorism can be difficult to define, since many groups accused of the practice insist that they are not terrorists but freedom fighters.

What are some examples of nationalist terrorist groups?

Nationalist terrorist groups include the Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Other prominent examples are the Basque Fatherland and Liberty, which seeks to create a Basque homeland separate from Spain, and the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which seeks to create a Kurdish state independent from Turkey.

Religious terrorism

Religious terrorists seek to use violence to further what they see as divinely commanded purposes, often targeting broad categories of foes in an attempt to bring about sweeping changes. Religious terrorists come from many major faiths, as well as from small cults. This type of terrorism is growing swiftly, notes Bruce Hoffman of the RAND think tank; in 1995 (the most recent year for which such statistics were available), nearly half of the 56 known, active international terrorist groups were religiously motivated.