Two powerful bombs exploded during a Christian church service in Tajikistan’s capital city of Dushanbe Oct. 1, leaving 10 members of the congregation dead and at least 49 more injured, many critically.
The explosions during Sunday morning services heavily damaged the Korean-led Sonmin Grace Church, still under construction in Dushanbe’s central district. Dunshanbe is located in Southwest Tajikistan.
According to information released in a U.N. security meeting Oct. 3 in Dunshanbe, two separate explosions occurred in the three story church center. “The first one was on the third floor,” one source told Compass Direct news service by telephone from Dunshanbe. “When people ran to the bottom floor to get out of the building, then another one went off on the first floor.”
The Tajik Interior Ministry estimated 200 people we in the church at the time. But the Russian ITAR-Tass news service said as many as 400, including many children, were present when the bombs exploded. A third bomb planted in the basement of the building did not explode.
According to ITAR-Tass, the explosions “tore the doors off their hinges, shattered the windows and turned the furniture into splinters.” A police spokesman said one of the bombs was equivalent to eight pounds of dynamite. “The church itself is unusable now,” one Dushanbe resident reported.
The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) initially reported that 49 were injured. But yesterday a staff member of the U.S. Mission to Dushanbe told compass that his sources indicated as many as 70 had been injured, half of them seriously. “We have heard there are a number of people who are in the burn center of one of the main hospitals in Dunshanbe,” he said.
Speaking by telephone from Almaty, the U.S. spokesman said that the Tajik government has confirmed it has launched an investigation into the bombings. The prosecutor general has reportedly opened a case, he said, and “a few suspects have been apprehended.”
However, sources in Dunshanbe report that so far leaders of the bombed church were the only individuals known to have been arrested by Tajik authorities for interrogation on the incident.
“All of their leaders have been placed behind bars,” one source told Compass. “It is said one is being badly beaten and all interrogated.”
Reportedly, 12 members of the congregation were arrested Oct. 1 and kept overnight for questioning without being allowed visitors or food brought in to them. One eyewitness who tried to visit the detained Christians said he saw only one of them, a South Korean national who clearly had been beaten. “I could tell that more than just questioning was going on,” the witness commented.
All but four of the 12 Christians were reported released by Oct. 2. To date, Tajik authorities have declined to speculate on the perpetrators of the bombing, although Russian newspaper have blamed Muslim fundamentalists.
“We don’t know,” he said.
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