11 Dead, 100 Injured in Belarus Metro Blast

A blast on Monday tore through a packed metro station near Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko's headquarters, killing eleven commuters and wounding nearly 100 in a suspected act of terror.

The explosion left clouds of suffocating smoke inside the capital Minsk's busiest metro station, whose exits lead to both the strongman president's main office and his residence as well as the country's powerful Security Council.

State news agency Belta said the explosion occurred in the last car of a train that had pulled into the station in the evening rush.

Footage from inside the Oktyabrskaya station showed dozens of people sitting stunned on the marble floor, their clothes in tatters, faces splattered with blood and their shoulders covered in pieces of white plaster.

"There was a big crater -- most of the victims were in there," one witness told Russian state television.

"The glass started to shake and all the people suddenly fell silent -- it went silent in a flash. Everyone started telling each other to be quiet and not to panic," another woman said.

One person had both his legs blown off by the explosion, a witness told Agence France Presse.

An AFP correspondent said the explosion paralyzed underground traffic across the city of 1.8 million, resulting in traffic jams and grinding travel in the city center to a halt.

Belarus is normally considered a safe country and has never been touched by large-scale militant attacks such as those carried out by Islamist militants in Moscow.

On March 29, 2010, 40 people were killed and dozens wounded by two female suicide bombers during the morning rush hour on the Moscow metro.

Lukashenko prides himself on instituting law and order in Belarus, taking credit for stability that has come at the expense of a fierce crackdown on all forms of dissent.

The blast appeared to leave officials momentarily stunned, with some time passing before Belta reported that Lukashenko had been informed and had himself visited the site, laying flowers.

An unnamed police source later told the Interfax-Zapad news agency that the blast was likely an act of terror.

"The principal version of events is an act of terror," the source told the agency. "The external signs, the nature of the wounds people received, point towards an act of terror."

The explosion comes amid rising political tensions in the country following Lukashenko's controversial re-election last year.

Underscoring the seriousness with which the government was treating the situation, Lukashenko was expected to hold a senior security meeting later Monday.

"This evening the head of state will hold an extraordinary meeting in connection with the explosion on the capital's metro," Lukashenko's chief spokesman Pavel Lyogky told the Interfax news agency.

The emergency session was to include the head of the country's KGB security service, the city's mayor and heads of all the city's police departments as well as other senior officials, news reports said.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated through central Minsk on election night after Lukashenko's overwhelming victory was announced, with truncheon-wielding police moving in against the protesters and arresting hundreds.

The arrests have added to the Lukashenko regime's growing international isolation, with both the European Union and the United States announcing travel bans and economic sanctions against some Belarusian state companies.