Suicide bomber targets security service building in north Russia

A 17-year-old student has blown himself up in the lobby of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in the northern city of Arkhangelsk, injuring three employees.

The unnamed teenager detonated a homemade explosive device at about 9am (06:00 GMT) on Wednesday and died on the spot, the country’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The Committee released a CCTV photo of the perpetrator, a young, clean-shaven white man with short brown hair.

An official, who spoke to AFP news agency on condition of anonymity, named the suicide bomber as Mikhail Zhlobitsky, a student at a local technical college.

Svetlana Petrenko, the spokeswoman for the Investigative Committee, said the bomber’s flat was being searched and that his friends and close relatives were being questioned.

She said checks would also be carried out to establish whether he was a member of any banned group.

Regional governor Igor Orlov said that the authorities were working to establish the type of explosive used.

“Things are very serious,” he said. “We are taking measures to increase security of all public and state buildings in Arkhangelsk region.”

Communist anarchists

Seven minutes before the blast, a post in an anarchist forum on Telegram, a messaging service, warned that the FSB building would be the target of a “terror attack”.

The writer of the post, who signed as Valeryan Panov, said he would claim responsibility for it.

“The reasons are quite clear to you. I have decided to do this because the FSB has gone fucking mad. It is inventing cases and torturing people,” said the post.

“I will most likely croak in the blast. I wish you a bright future of anarchist communism.”

The FSB is the main successor to the feared KGB agency, known for persecuting dissidents in the Soviet era.

Attacks by anarchists on Russian authorities have in the past included setting police cars on fire and throwing Molotov cocktails at the offices of the ruling party United Russia.