THE TELEGRAPH: A female suicide bomber attacked a train station in a southern Russia city on Sunday, authorities said, killing at least 13 people in the deadliest such blast outside the volatile North Caucasus region in nearly three years. MORE
WASHINGTON POST: A blast that tore through an electric bus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd during Monday’s morning rush hour, killing 14, was probably carried out by suicide bombers from the same organization behind a railway explosion a day earlier, officials said. Together more than 30 people were killed in the explosions, putting the city of one million on edge and highlighting the terrorist threat Russia is facing as it prepares to host February’s Winter Games in Sochi, President Vladimir Putin’s pet project. While terrorists may find it hard to get to the tightly guarded Olympic facilities, the bombings have shown they can hit civilian targets elsewhere in Russia with shocking ease. Volgograd, located about 650 kilometers (400 miles) northeast of Sochi, serves as a key transport hub for southern Russia, with numerous bus routes linking it to volatile provinces in Russia’s North Caucasus, where insurgents have been seeking an Islamic state. MORE
SIBERIAN TIMES: At least 16 were killed in the attack on Volgograd railway station in southern Russia just six weeks before the 2014 Winter Olympics. Law enforcement 
officials named Islamic ‘black widow’ Oksana Aslanova, 26, [PICTURED, RIGHT] as being responsible for the carnage. While DNA tests had not confirmed this, Aslanova was widely reported as being the perpetrator. She had been on the wanted list for almost two years. Russian news source Life News published a picture of what it reported was her bloodied head lying amid a pile of debris with her long brown hair spread across the floor. She was reported as having been married to two Islamic militant leaders liquidated by Russian forces in the North Caucasus. She formerly lived in the town of Raduzhniy in Nizhnevartovsk district of Khanty-Mansiysk region, with population of 43,580. ‘Aslanova was a wife of ‘General’ Validzhanov, who was destroyed,’ said a bulletin issued last month expressing concern over her whereabouts, and predicting she could make an attack. ‘She went through a training in camps and can become a black widow and take part in preparing terrorist attacks on the territory of Russia’, said the Dagestan Interior Ministry. Initial reports said she had two accomplices in Volgograd. Footage which was flashed around the world showed a huge orange fireball blow out the heavy front doors and windows from the grey stone three-storey Volgograd station. ‘A suicide bomber who was approaching a metal detector saw a law enforcement official and, after growing nervous, set off an explosive device,” said Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee which opened a probe into a suspected ‘act of terror’. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: BLACK WIDOW: The Face Of Moscow Subway Terror
PREVIOUSLY: Two ‘Black Widow’ Suicide Bombers Kill 35 In Russian Underground