MINSK, Belarus — An explosion tore through a key subway station during evening rush hour Monday, killing 11 people and wounding 126. An official said the blast was a terrorist act.
President Alexander Lukashenko did not say what caused the explosion at the Oktyabrskaya subway station in Minsk, the capital, but he suggested outside forces could be behind it.
“I do not rule out that this gift could have been brought from outside,” Lukashenko said.
The authoritarian leader, under strong pressure from the West over his suppression of the opposition, has frequently alleged that outside forces seek to destabilize his regime.
Deputy prosecutor-general Andrei Shved said the blast was a terrorist act but did not give further details.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw heavily wounded people being carried out of the station, including one person with missing legs.
Several witnesses said the explosion hit about 6 p.m. just as passengers were stepping off a train.
The station, where Minsk’s two subway lines intersect, was crowded with passengers at the end of the workday. The station is within 100 yards of the presidential administration building and the Palace of the Republic, a concert hall often used for government ceremonies.
Lukashenko visited the site about two hours after the blast and left without comment. He later ordered that the country’s feared police to “call in all forces and turn everything inside-out” to investigate the blast.
About five hours after the blast, Health Minister Vasily Zharko said 11 people were killed and 126 people were wounded, 22 of them severely. One witness, Alexei Kiklevich, said at least part of the station’s ceiling collapsed after the explosion.
Political tensions have been rising in Belarus since December, when a massive demonstration against a disputed presidential election sparked a harsh crackdown by police in which more than 700 people were arrested, including seven presidential candidates.
The opposition Belarusian Popular Front late Monday issued a statement calling on authorities “to refrain from using this incident as grounds for a new wave of political repression,” the Interfax news agency reported.
Lukashenko, who was declared the overwhelming winner of the disputed Dec. 19 election, has run Belarus, a former Soviet republic, with an iron fist since 1994.
