By Veronica Khokhlova
A suicide car bombing outside a market in Vladikavkaz, the capital of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, killed at least 18 people and wounded over 100 on Sept. 9. The attack is not the first one to occur at this location (62 people were killed there in 1999, 12 in 2008); it also came just days after the sixth anniversary of the 2004 school siege tragedy in Beslan, a town 15 km north of Vladikavkaz.
North Ossetian bloggers’ initial reactions to Thursday’s market blast reflected their exasperation with the ongoing violence in the region.
LJ user liza-valieva, a Vladikavkaz-based journalist, wrote (RUS):
An explosion at the central market, again. Half an hour ago. Could be heard even here.
There are the dead and the wounded.
Will it ever end?
Below is one exchange from the comments section:
maxialla:
I’ve never been a supporter of this point of view – "[the best way out is to move elsewhere]” – but right now it [appears rational] […]
liza_valieva:
It is always possible to move, but people I care about will still stay behind, and no matter where I am, I’ll worry about them just as much.
Moscow-based LJ user glazastikk wrote (RUS):
[…] My sister said that papa was fine, and then I got through to him myself, asked him to leave the market, because I was afraid there’d be a second explosion. […]
And then I was scared for all those who have failed to get through to their folks on the phone. And I keep thinking of it ever since […].
[…]
I’m sick of being scared and worried. And I don’t see a way out. […]
LJ user manavar, a Vladikavkaz-based medical student, was at the local hospital at the time of the blast. Hewrote (RUS):
[…] Ambulances, [public mini-buses], regular cars were rushing in. We unloaded a woman whose arm had been blown off. Then there was another one, missing an eye. Seventeen people were brought in. Two corpses. One person, already dead, was lying on the floor of a yellow mini-bus. A man. One woman died at the ER. Most people had shrapnel cuts. […]
As always, there was not enough medications. […] For the first hour and a half, there was chaos at [the hospital], strangers were walking around. Things got better only when the police had cordoned off the hospital.
People were saying that at the school near the site of the bombing all the windows had been blown out and the children had been cut with shrapnel.
[Damn!] When will it all end!
In another post, LJ user manavar wrote (RUS) about his mother’s experience that day:
[…] Mama was at the market at that time, she was walking around the aisles inside and was just planning to go to a store […]. She stayed on [inside] for a second longer to look at the vegetables. The blast was so powerful that her ears got plugged. […] Mama managed to squeeze herself into some niche and thus avoided the stampede. People ran, fell down, got up, ran again. Hundreds of people running from the area where black smoke was rising; only a few running towards that area. Some in order to help, others because they’d left their dear ones there. Only when the crowd receded, mama was able to get out of the niche and also went towards the exit.
Her hands are still shaking. And I can still see that woman with one eye missing. She is somebody’s mother, too.
LJ user manavar’s first post was featured (RUS) in the Radio Echo of Moscow’s blog section. He admitted that such publicity upset him, but his post also sparked a discussion that highlighted a rather common perception of Russia’s North Caucasus as a mismanaged "someplace else”:
osokin:
You constantly have terrorist attacks over there! So why was there "not enough medications” then? Who is responsible for the supplies?
crafty:
I am a Muscovite. And it’s OVER HERE in Russia that there are terrorist attacks and it’s OVER HERE that there is chaos with medications. The fish rots from the head. Just imagine that the blast took place at a market in your neighborhood – there wouldn’t even be enough [blood] plasma at the local hospital, let alone everything else.
LJ user gagloyev, a Moscow-based Ossetian blogger, detected a similar note of detachment in PM Vladimir Putin’s statement on the Vladikavkaz market attack:
"They have all they need OVER THERE…”?
These are the words of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin from his dialog with Russia’s deputy minister of health care and social development Belov during today’s [government] meeting (broadcast on all TV channels today).
A question: Mr. Putin doesn’t consider North Ossetia part of the Russian Federation anymore?!
And this person wants to be the national leader?! […]
Vladikavkaz-based LJ user alan_tskhurbaev wrote this, among other things, in a comment to LJ usergagloyev’s post:
[…] All in all, why pick on their words when there are so many of their actions that we can be critical of […].
LJ user firmozadasso commented (RUS) on the government’s promise to pay 1 million rubles ($32,388) to the victims’ families: