At least 34 people are dead with 37 injured after two blasts ripped through two packed metro stations during Moscow’s rush hour. The explosions happened within forty minutes of each other.

The first tore through the second carriage of a train as it stood at the Lubyanka station. An hour later at the Park Kultury station a second blast wrecked the second carriage of a train. The Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov blamed the attacks on suicide bombers.

“Two female terrorist suicide bombers carried out these bombings. I cannot say exactly if they were on the platform or on the trains but the explosions happened as the trains approached the platforms and were timed to cause the maximum number of casualties,” he said.

As the emergency services continued their grim task no group has claimed responsibility. Suspicion could fall on the groups from Russia’s North Caucasus where Moscow is fighting a growing Islamist insurgency.

The first explosion at the Lublyanka station happened close to Russia’s main domestic security service, the FSB.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is currently visiting Siberia, is “receiving detailed information from security agencies and social services about the work on helping the victims”, a spokesman said.

Moscow’s metro is one of the busiest subways in the world, carrying some 5.5m passengers a day.

There was a major attack on the Moscow Metro in February 2004, when at least 39 people were killed by a bomb on a packed train as it approached the Paveletskaya Metro station.

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