Moscow:
An explosion tore through a subway station near the office of the authoritarian president of Belarus during evening rush hour on Monday, killing at least two people and wounding numerous others, according to news agencies.
The cause of the blast at the station in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, was not immediately clear.
Several witnesses told The Associated Press that the explosion occurred just as passengers were leaving a train in the Oktyabrskaya station about 6 pm. The station is located in the center of Minsk, very close to the offices of the government, including those of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko.
News agencies reported smoke pouring from the station's exits as bodies were carried out on stretchers.
Aleksandr Vasiliyev, a local journalist on the scene, said by telephone from Minsk that witnesses told him that the explosion was caused by a bomb that had been packed with nuts, bolts and other shrapnel. The authorities would not immediately confirm such information. The explosion occurred inside the station itself, not in a subway car, the witnesses told Mr. Vasiliyev.
Mr. Vasiliyev said that shortly after the blast, blood had pooled on the sidewalk outside the station where victims had been evacuated.
"Two dead bodies were brought out," he said.
Anton Motolko, a photo journalist who lives near the station, ran to the scene after hearing about the explosion on Twitter.
"I see blood, about 10 people, men and women, because at this time, it's peak," Mr. Motolko said in a telephone interview. "It's the two biggest lines of our subway."
Police cordoned off the subway entrances. Crowds gathered around the main entrance, he said, as passengers emerged bloody and crying.
One of Russia's main television stations,
Channel One, broadcast interviews with witnesses who were in the station.
"We saw a bright light and everything started to shake," one man said. "People were lying all over." Another man said, "We were suffocating - there was so much smoke. We could barely see anything."
A woman recalled that, "The glass crackled and everyone just fell. And then there was a deathly silence." Mr. Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, won another term in December after an election that spurred protests over allegations of vote-rigging. The security services responded with a far-reaching crackdown, sending riot police to break up a large demonstration on election night and arresting hundreds of people.
The opposition to Mr. Lukashenko was largely peaceful before and after the election, but there has been similar violence in recent years. In 2008, a bomb exploded in a park in Minsk, wounding dozens of people during a festival to celebrate independence day. The authorities never determined a motive for the bombing.
In the city of Vitebsk, near the northeastern Russian border, two blasts in one month in 2005 left about four dozen wounded.