Nation mourns as Russia bomb toll rises

Mourners pay last respects to a victim of the Moscow bomb

MOSCOW -- Three more people injured in the bomb blast which ripped through a crowded underpass in central Moscow have died, bringing the death toll from the explosion to 11.

Seven people were killed at the scene on Tuesday and more than 90 wounded. Another man died in a Moscow hospital on Wednesday.

On Saturday, officials at Sklifosovskogo and Botkina hospitals told Reuters that Lidyia Morozova, 39, and Eduard Kocharyan, 61, had both died of burns overnight, while Olga Andarkhanova, 35, died on Saturday morning.

The news came after Russia began laying to rest the victims of the bomb blast following the three-day mourning period traditional in Orthodox Christianity.

Small and scattered ceremonies were held across Moscow, with dozens of relatives and friends of Marina Leonova went to Vagankovskoye cemetery on Friday to pay their last respects. She was one of the seven people who died at the site of the explosion in Pushkin Square.

Her daughter Sveta was unable to attend her mother's funeral as the 14-year-old ballet dancer was still in hospital with a shattered leg and burns sustained when she tried to douse the flames that consumed her mother.

No one has told her that her mother is dead. But, her grandfather told a mourner at the funeral, she knows: "She feels it."

A truly special woman

Anna Yakovlevna, a middle-aged woman attending the burial with a daughter who dances in a youth ballet troupe with Sveta, wanted to talk only of the virtues of the dead.

"They say you only speak well of the dead, but this woman was truly special. All the fine things you can say about somebody -- that she was clever and caring and kind," she said.

"What a terrible tragedy this is," she sobbed.

The stories of the victims of the bomb have been repeated over and over on television, along with the shockingly graphic images of blood-smeared wounded fleeing the tunnel and the bodies found among the blackened wreckage.

The whole country knows of Olga Udalova, the 18-year-old journalist who was rushing to meet her boyfriend. He showed up 10 minutes late and was saved. She was killed in the blast.

The television cameras were kept outside the chapel at Vagankovskoye cemetery, where inside relatives and friends clutched sputtering candles and a small women's choir sang funeral hymns.

The coffin was open, as Orthodox ritual expects, but the charred body was completely hidden under a white shroud. After the ceremony, mourners filed past and kissed the cloth over the dead woman's lips.

Hundreds of Muscovites continue to visit the site of the explosion to pay homage to the victims, while another funeral was being held on Saturday.

Dozens of candles have been lit at the concrete wall near the spot where the bomb went off.

Russian president Vladimir Putin went to the scene on Friday, laying roses alongside the other floral tributes to the dead.

No new breakthroughs

Investigators have not announced any new arrests or breakthroughs in the case, and Putin urged security forces to do more to find the culprits during a meeting on Saturday.

Two men who had been questioned on Wednesday were set to be released, the Interior Ministry press service said.

The men had matched witness descriptions of two people who left a bag in the passageway minutes before the explosion.

Russian officials have blamed the blast on Chechen guerrillas, although investigators say they have not officially concluded whether it was a politically motivated strike or an unrelated act of gangland-style violence.

The Interior Ministry press service said it had no evidence confirming Chechen involvement.

However, the First Deputy Chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, Colonel-General Valery Manilov, said that, in response to the tragedy, more resources would be made available for destroying the Chechen resistance.

Chechen rebel leaders have suggested that the Russian authorities staged the blast to feed anti-Chechen anger and justify continuing the military offensive.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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