Bomb at Belarus concert hurts 50
Published Date:
05 July 2008
By Andrei Makhovsky
UP TO 50 people were wounded yesterday by a home-made bomb that sprayed nuts and bolts into the crowd at an open-air concert in Minsk, the Belarus capital.
The country's president, Alexander Lukashenko, was at the event, officials said.
Mr Lukashenko, who has ruled the former Soviet state with an iron grip since the mid-1990s, was not far from the blast but was unhurt and did not appear to have been the target, his spokesman said.
A second, unexploded bomb was found near the blast site, the interior ministry said.
The bomb went off in a big square shortly after midnight at the concert marking Independence Day. A witness said the explosion left a pit 8in deep with blood splattered on the grass around it.
Three of the 50 injured were in a serious condition and doctors said they had removed shrapnel from the legs of dozens of people. The injured, mainly young people, included at least two children, aged five and six.
Pavel Legkiy, a presidential spokesman, said Mr Lukashenko had "reached the site of the explosion within several minutes".
The full article contains 190 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
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Last Updated:
04 July 2008 10:23 PM
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Source:
The Scotsman
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Location:
Edinburgh
