Members of the emergency services work at the site of a blast on a trolleybus in Volgograd, Russia, yesterday. Photo: Reuters

A bomb ripped a bus apart in Volgograd yesterday, killing 14 people in the second deadly attack blamed on suicide bombers in the southern Russian city in 24 hours and raising fears of Islamist attacks on the Winter Olympics.

President Vladimir Putin, who has staked his prestige on February’s Sochi Games and dismissed threats from Chechen and other Islamist militants in the nearby North Caucasus, ordered tighter security nationwide after the morning rush-hour blast.

Investigators said they believed a male suicide bomber set off the blast, a day after a similar attack killed at least 17 in the main rail station of a city that serves as a gateway to the southern wedge of Russian territory bounded by the Black and Caspian Seas and the Caucasus mountains.

The blue and white trolleybus – powered by overhead electric cables – was reduced to a twisted, gutted carcass. Bodies were strewn across the street as Russians prepared to celebrate New Year, the biggest annual holiday.

Windows in nearby apartments were blown out by the blast, which Russia’s foreign ministry condemned as part of a global “terrorist” campaign and welcomed a declaration of solidarity made on Sunday by the United Nations Security Council.

“For the second day, we are dying. It’s a nightmare,” a woman near the scene said, her voice trembling as she choked back tears. “What are we supposed to do, just walk now?”

“Identical” shrapnel to that in the rail station indicated that the two bombs were linked, investigators said.

“There was smoke and people were lying in the street,” said Olga, who works nearby. “The driver was thrown a long way. She was alive and moaning ... Her hands and clothes were bloody.”

On Sunday, investigators initially described the station bomber as a woman from Dagestan, a hub of Islamist militancy on the Caspian, but they later said the attacker may have been a man. In October, a woman from the North Caucasus blew up and killed seven people on a bus in Volgograd.

The attacks threaten to fuel ethnic tension, which has increased with an influx of migrant labourers from the impoverished Caucasus and Muslim Central Asian nations to cities around Russia, including Volgograd, in recent years.

“They need to be chased out of here. It has become a transit junction – there are all these non-Russians, both good and bad,” said Olga, a saleswoman at a store near the mangled bus. “We’ve plenty bandits of our own. Why do we need others?”

Police were checking documents of people in Volgograd, with a focus on migrants, said Russian news agency Itar-Tass.

Christian and Muslim leaders appealed for calm. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill said religion had “nothing to do with what is happening now in Volgograd”.

Several dozen nationalists held a protest outside a chapel in the city yesterday and police detained over 20 of them. “We are Russian; we must not be afraid,” said Mikhail Yasin, a protester who lit a candle for the bombing victims.

“God is with us. We are in our own land and no terrorist can frighten us – nor can the police.” It was unclear why the city, which will host soccer matches during the 2018 World Cup, has been hit. However, geography – being close to the restive regions – and its historical significance, may have contributed to its being targeted.

Trolleybus bombing follows Sunday’s railway station attack

Volgograd has held a place in Russians’ sense of national identity since, when known as Stalingrad, its Soviet defenders held off German invaders to turn the course of World War II.

City authorities have revived the former name for special occasions as Stalin’s image has been somewhat rehabilitated under Putin. He remains a hate figure, however, to Chechens, whose nation was deported en masse on the dictator’s orders.

The violence raises fears of a concerted campaign before the Olympics, which start on February 7 around Sochi, a resort on the Black Sea at the western end of the Caucasus range, 700 kilometres southwest of Volgograd.

In an online video posted in July, the Chechen leader of insurgents who want to carve an Islamic state out of the swathe of mainly Muslim provinces south of Volgograd, urged militants to use “maximum force” to prevent the Games from going ahead.

In power since 2000, Putin secured the Games for Russia and has staked his personal reputation on a safe and successful Olympics. This month, he freed jailed opponents including oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Pussy Riot punk band to remove causes for international criticism at the event. Intended to showcase how Russia has changed since the collapse of Soviet communism in 1991, the Games have also been a focus for complaints in the West and among Russian liberals that Putin has stifled dissent and encouraged intolerance.

Putin was first elected after winning popularity for a war on Chechen rebels who had bid for independence after the break up of the Soviet Union. Attacks by Islamist militants whose insurgency is rooted in that war have clouded his 14 years in power and now present his biggest security challenge.

Police said additional officers were being deployed to railway stations and airports nation-wide after the bombing at the Volgograd rail station on Sunday, but the attacks raised questions about the effectiveness of security measures.

The police force in Volgograd, a city of a million people on the west bank of the river Volga, has been depleted as some 600 officers were redeployed to Sochi to tighten security around Olympic sites, a police officer said.