Investigators pointed the finger at a Chechen warlord of Dagestani origin as being the mastermind behind the explosion that ripped through a Victory Day parade in Dagestan, killing 42 people.
Dagestani Interior Minister Adilgirei Magomedtagirov said he had evidence that Rappani Khalilov, whom local police suspect of plotting a number of blasts in Dagestan over the past eight months, was behind the Thursday bombing and promised to personally make sure that he was brought to justice.
"As interior minister I swear that he will be either seized or eliminated," Magomedtagirov told reporters in the regional capital, Makhachkala, Interfax reported. "No federal task force will take part. This operation will be carried out by the Dagestani Interior Ministry with the permission of the Russian interior minister."
He said Khalilov is believed to be hiding in Chechnya's northern Nozhayurt region.
Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov told a separate news conference in Makhachkala on Sunday that investigators have identified the individuals who plotted and carried out the attack.
"We have a sufficient amount of information ... but I cannot disclose at this time what we know," Kolesnikov was quoted by news agencies as saying.
An antipersonnel land mine with the force of 3 kilograms of dynamite tore through a festive crowd attending the traditional Victory Day parade at 9:50 a.m. Thursday in the town of Kaspiisk. The bomb, planted in shrubbery near the sidewalk and filled with scraps of steel wire, detonated as a military brass band marched past.
Excerpts from an amateur video taken by a Kaspiisk resident and broadcast on television shows the military band playing a triumphant tune before abruptly being engulfed in billowing black smoke. Screams break out. As the smoke clears, soldiers in camouflage and civilians are seen sprawled around a deep crater in the street, blood pouring from their wounds.
Twenty-two people, including six children, were declared dead at the site, and about 110 more were hospitalized. As of Sunday, 20 more had died of their injuries. The dead include 21 soldiers stationed in Kaspiisk, mostly musicians marching in the parade, and 13 children who had run in front of the band.
Unlike after other smaller bombings in the North Caucasus in recent months, President Vladimir Putin said he would personally take change of the investigation into the attack. The blast occurred minutes before he addressed World War II veterans at a Victory Day rally in Moscow.
Putin appointed Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev to head the team of investigators and ordered him to report directly to him.
The country was left in a state of shock and grief. Mind-numbing news coverage of the explosion overshadowed the usually jubilant reports about Victory Day, which commemorates the Allies' defeat of Nazi Germany.
The leaders and governments of many countries expressed their condolences and condemned the attack as an act of terrorism.
"We strongly condemn this cowardly and violent act," U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday, Reuters reported. "We look forward to seeing the perpetrators of these attacks brought to justice."
Unlike after similar attacks in the region, the authorities did not immediately accuse Chechen rebels of being behind the bombing.
Viktor Kazantsev, Putin's envoy to the Southern Federal District, urged Russians in televised remarks not to jump to the conclusion that there was a Chechen angle.
Chechen rebels denied any involvement.
"The Chechens and those who sympathize with the Chechens in their struggle have nothing in common with such actions because it would mean playing into the hands of our enemies," Akhmed Zakayev, a spokesman for rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, said in a statement posted on the rebels' web site Chechenpress.com on Friday.
But Patrushev, who flew to Makhachkala to investigate, said the day after the attack that it "may be a result of the events taking place on the territory of Chechnya," Interfax reported.
He added that the FSB had detained several suspects.
It was unclear Sunday how many suspects had been picked up.
Three suspects -- ethnic Dagestanis and followers of Wahhabism, an austere brand of Islam -- were detained in St. Petersburg on Saturday and flown to Makhachkala, Dagestani police said.
They were cleared Sunday of Thursday's attack but remained in custody on suspicion of carrying out other bombings in Dagestan.
Investigators drew a composite sketch of the man suspected of carrying out the attack Friday and showed it on national television.
"They used that amateur footage of the parade and the explosion -- it showed a man who suddenly rushed from the spot 15 seconds before the blast," said Dagestani journalist Timur Djafarov, who saw the full video.
"Police also used descriptions from children who remembered the man's appearance," he said by telephone from Makhachkala on Sunday.
Dagestani police spokesman Abdulmanap Musayev echoed the republic's interior minister in saying the evidence points toward the warlord Khalilov as masterminding the bombing.
"Rappani Khalilov, a Chechen warlord of Dagestani origin, who is suspected of masterminding 15 terrorist attacks in Dagestan in the past eight months, has employed about 40 terrorists to carry out explosions here," he said by telephone from Makhachkala on Sunday.
"We have sufficient grounds to suspect that he was also behind the attack in Kaspiisk."
Khalilov's name surfaced for the first time after a bomb exploded near a military truck in Makhachkala in January, killing seven servicemen and injuring 20.
Eight suspects were arrested shortly after that blast, Musayev said, and they named Khalilov as their leader. They also identified about 20 of their associates, who have been arrested, he said.
The Dagestani Interior Ministry says Khalilov's wife is a sister-in-law of Khattab, the Chechen warlord of Arab origin whom the FSB declared dead in late April.
Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky also linked the Makhachkala attack with the Kaspiisk explosion. He told Interfax on Saturday that suspects sought in the Kaspiisk blast likely belonged to the same group that bombed the truck.
A man accused of coordinating Khalilov's network in Dagestan, Zaur Akavov, was detained by Dagestani police in Makhachkala on May 6 and hospitalized, Musayev said. While being detained, Akavov was shot in both arms and legs.
Deputy Prosecutor General Kolesnikov said Sunday that most of Khalilov's group underwent training in Chechnya, Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, three men killed in the Kaspiisk explosion -- an officer, his teenage son and a soldier -- were laid to rest Sunday in Omsk. The bodies of 16 servicemen were flown Saturday night to Moscow to be sent on to their respective hometowns. The other four servicemen were buried Thursday in Dagestan.
The military has dealt with tragedy before in Kaspiisk. In November 1996, a bomb ripped through a nine-story apartment building where federal border guards lived with their families. Sixty-eight people were killed. Results of an investigation into the incident have never been made public.
Makhachkala averted a bombing similar to the one in Kaspiisk on Victory Day two years ago.
Local policemen found and defused a time bomb planted on Makhachkala's central square just two hours before the parade was scheduled to pass.