Chechen leader behind Moscow airport bombing

A Chechen rebel leader has claimed responsibility for last month's bombing at Moscow's main airport which killed 36 people and injured more than 100.

Doku Umarov said in a video posted on the Islamist website Kavkazcenter on February 7 that he had ordered the suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport.

The 46-year-old said there would be further such attacks in pursuit of an independent Muslim state in Russia's Caucasus region - a territory embracing Chechnya, Dagestan and other nearby territories.

The self styled Emir of the Caucasus described the attack on Moscow's busiest airport as a "special operation" directed against the Russian people and its prime minister, Vladimir Putin. In the recorded video, made on the day of the attack, January 24, he said: "The special operation today in Moscow ... was carried out on my orders."

Wearing combat fatigues whilst talking quietly and hesitantly, he said "I prove to the Putin regime in Moscow that though we conduct these operations irregularly, I want to show this chauvinist nation, this chauvinist regime of Russia that we can carry out these operations where we want and when we want. This is another proof that we can conduct this operations regularly and make them stronger, more aggressive."

The attack bore the hallmark of Caucasus rebels but Monday's video was the first time Umarov had claimed direct responsibility for it.

Putin launched a war in late 1999 that crushed a rebel government in Chechnya and has made re-establishment of Kremlin rule there a personal political priority. The military operation has largely subdued insurgency in Chechnya, but Islamist rebels now operate with increasing force in neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia.