“A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a crowded commuter train in southern Russia today, killing at least 40 people in what President Vladimir V. Putin denounced as a terrorist act intended to disrupt parliamentary elections here this weekend.” So says the New York Times.
“The explosion, which occurred at 7:42 a.m., wrenched apart the second carriage of the train only moments after it left the station in Yessentuki, near the foothills of the Caucasus, not far from Chechnya. . . .
“While there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, Sergei N. Ignatchenko, chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, said in an interview that it bore all the characteristics of terrorist acts by Chechnya’s separatist fighters. . . .
“Over the spring and summer Russia suffered a wave of terrorist attacks, many of them carried out by suicide bombers. The attacks — at a rock concert in Moscow, a bus stop and military hospital in Mozdok and government buildings in Chechnya — killed more than 250 people. . . .
“Officials have attributed the attacks — as well as the siege of a theater in Moscow last October that ended with the deaths of 129 hostages and 41 guerrillas — to Chechens aided by international Islamic extremists.”
Here is their motivation: traditional jihad theology.