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'Terrible Explosion' Twitter users are reporting that heavy traffic on the roads into Moscow from the airport is making it more difficult to rush the wounded to hospital. "Drivers aren't letting the ambulances through," reads one Tweet from a traffic jam. Indeed, it was a Twitter user, Ilya Likhtenfeld, who first reported the explosion at 4:30 p.m. local time. "Terror attack at Domodedovo!" she wrote. "A terrible explosion in the airport building! Dozens of bodies of torn apart!"

A newly arrived British Airways passenger, Mark Green, told BBC television that "as we were putting the bags in the car, a lot of alarms ... were going off and people started flowing out of the terminal, some of whom were covered in blood."

The airport is located 42 kilometers southeast of the Moscow city center. Despite being seen as the city's most modern airport, it has been criticized for inadequate security precautions in the past. In 2004, two suicide bombers were able to buy tickets illegally before blowing themselves up in the air. Ninety people were killed in the pair of attacks.

Security across Moscow, particularly in the subway system and transportation hubs, was immediately strengthened in the wake of the Monday attack. In March, 2010, 40 people were killed and 60 injured in two explosions that struck the subways system. The attacks were the work of two female suicide bombers from the instable region of Dagestan.

'Deeply Disturbed'
More recent attacks in Russia have likewise originated from the North Caucasus, particularly the separatist Caucasus Emirate in the region of Chechnya. Recently, however, there has been a struggle for leadership within the group. Whether it has resulted in a split is unclear. Analysts say that rebels from the North Caucasus planned to step up activity ahead of the 2012 presidential elections in Russia.

In 2009, Chechen fighters claimed responsibility for detonating a bomb on a high-speed train between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Twenty-six people died in that attack.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen posted a message on Twitter in which he said he was "deeply disturbed" by the attack. "I strongly condemn it. NATO and Russia stand together in the fight against terrorism."