Russian police and emergency personnel block an area at the Tekhnologicheskaya metro station after explosion in St.Petersburg subway in St.Petersburg, Russia, Monday, April 3, 2017. The subway in the... (Associated Press) 
 
 Russian police and emergency personnel block an area at the Tekhnologicheskaya metro station after explosion in St.Petersburg subway in St.Petersburg, Russia, Monday, April 3, 2017. The subway in the Russian city of St. Petersburg is reported an explosion on a subway train. (AP Photo/Yevgeny Kurskov) (Associated Press) 
 
 ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — A bomb blast tore through a subway train deep under Russia's second-largest city Monday, killing 11 people and wounding more than 40 in a chaotic scene that left victims sprawled on a smoky platform. Hours later, anguish and fear rose again when police found and defused a shrapnel-packed explosive device at another St. Petersburg station. 
 
 There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came while President Vladimir Putin was visiting the city, his hometown. In the past two decades, Russian trains and planes have been frequent targets of terrorism, usually blamed on Islamic militants. 
 
 News reports initially said police were searching for two suspects, and Russian state television showed a photo of one suspect wearing what appeared to be a skullcap characteristic of Russia's Muslim regions. However, the Interfax news agency later cited unspecified sources as saying police now suspect the blast was the work of a suicide bomber linked to radical Islamists. 
 
 The National Anti-Terrorism Committee said it was looking for the "perpetrators and organizers of the terror attack." 
 
 St. Petersburg, a major tourist destination famed for its imperial palaces and lavish art museums, had been spared previous attacks. 
 
 "From now on, I will be scared to take the subway," said Marina Ilyina, 30, who brought flowers to the station where the train stopped after the bombing. "We in St. Petersburg thought we wouldn't be touched by that." 
 
 The explosion occurred in midafternoon as the train traveled between stations on one of the city's north-south lines. 
 
 The driver chose to continue on to the next stop, Technological Institute, a decision praised by the Investigative Committee as aiding evacuation efforts and reducing the danger to passengers who would have had to walk along the electrified tracks. 
 
 The National Anti-Terrorism Committee said the death toll was 11, with another 45 people being treated for wounds in hospitals. 
 
 Amateur video broadcast by Russian TV showed people lying on the platform of the Technological Institute station, and others bleeding and weeping just after the damaged train pulled in. 
 
 "Everything was covered in smoke. There were a lot of firefighters," Maria Smirnova, a student on a train behind the stricken one, told independent TV station Dozhd. 
 
 Within two hours of the blast, authorities had found and deactivated another bomb at another busy station, Vosstaniya Square, the anti-terror agency said. That station is a major transfer point for passengers on two lines and serves the railway station to Moscow. 
 
 Russian law enforcement agencies confirmed the device was loaded with shrapnel, and the Interfax news agency said it contained up to 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of explosives. 
 
 Interfax cited an unidentified law enforcement official saying that investigators think the suspected suicide bomber left the bomb at the Vosstaniya Square station before blowing himself up on the train. 
 
 The agency said authorities believe the suspect, a 23-year old who came from ex-Soviet Central Asia and was linked to radical Islamist groups, carried the explosive device onto the train in a rucksack. 
 
 Asked about the report, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn't comment, saying it's up to law enforcement agencies to comment on details of the probe. 
 
 The entire St. Petersburg subway system was shut down and evacuated, but partial service resumed after about six hours. 
 
 Security was immediately tightened at all of the country's key transportation sites, Russia's National Anti-Terrorist Committee said. Moscow officials said that included the subway in the Russian capital. 
 
 Putin, who meeting with the president of Belarus at the Constantine Palace on the city's outskirts, offered condolences on national television. 
 
 "Law enforcement agencies and intelligence services are doing their best to establish the cause and give a full picture of what happened," a somber-looking Putin said. 
 
 He later laid flowers outside the Technological Institute station, where the damaged train arrived after the explosion. 
 
 Some residents of St. Petersburg, a city of 5 million, responded with both dismay and determination. 
 
 "They won't succeed in breaking up our country. We are all citizens of one country despite various political views and religious beliefs," said 24-year-old Alexander Malikov, who brought flowers and candles to an improvised memorial outside one of the stations. 
 
 The bombing drew widespread condemnation. 
 
 President Donald Trump said it was "absolutely a terrible thing." White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the U.S. was prepared to offer assistance to Russia. 
 
 Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, which is backing Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces along with Russia, says the incident was the type of "terrorism" Russia was fighting in Syria. 
 
 Most of the terrorist attacks in Russia have been connected to the insurgency in Chechnya and other Caucasus republics in the southern part of the country. 
 
 The last confirmed attack was in October 2015 when Islamic State militants downed a Russian airliner heading from an Egyptian resort to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board. 
 
 The Dec. 25, 2016, crash of a Russian plane near the southern city of Sochi that killed 92 people, including members of the Red Army Choir, is widely believed to have been due to a bomb, but no official cause has been given. 
 
 Two female suicide bombers killed 40 people and wounded more than 100 in the Moscow subway on March 29, 2010. Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for the attack, warning Russian leaders that "the war is coming to their cities." 
 
 A Moscow-to-St. Petersburg train was bombed on Nov. 27, 2009, in an attack that left 26 dead and 100 injured. Umarov's group also said he ordered this attack. 
 
 Russian airports also have been targeted. On Jan. 24, 2011, a suicide bomber blew himself up at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, killing 37 people and wounding 180. The same airport in August 2004 saw Islamic suicide bombers board two airplanes and bring them down, killing a total of 90 people. 
 
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 Heintz reported from Moscow. Vladimir Isachenkov and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report. ||||| Police officers and security personnel stay inside a metro station following the St. Petersburg metro blast that took place on April 3, in Moscow, Russia April 5, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov 
 
 Flowers are pictured in front of the Spasskaya metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia, April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor 
 
 ST PETERSBURG The main suspect in a suicide bombing on the St Petersburg metro that killed 14 people had rented an apartment in the city a month before the blast, neighbors and a building maintenance worker told Reuters on Wednesday. 
 
 A day after Monday's attack, security officials raided the apartment and ordered other residents to leave -- a precaution often undertaken when police believe there may be explosives or bomb-making equipment inside. 
 
 A witness who was present during the search, and who did not want to be identified, told Reuters she saw belongings packed into black bags and cardboard boxes, and household containers with an unidentified powder inside. 
 
 The Investigative Committee, the state body leading the investigation, said footage from security cameras near the same building showed the suspect, Akbarzhon Jalilov, leaving home carrying a bag and a rucksack. It did not specify if that was on the day of the attack. 
 
 Jalilov was born in 1995 in Kyrgyzstan, a mainly Muslim ex-Soviet republic in central Asia, and held a Russian passport. 
 
 If it is proven that he was motivated by militant Islamist ideology, that will test Russian President Vladimir Putin's policy of military intervention in Syria. 
 
 Some Russians may decide their country's intervention is making them a target for reprisal attacks by Islamists instead of making them safer as Putin had told them would happen. 
 
 Jalilov moving into the rented apartment, in a Soviet-built nine-storey building in north-eastern St Petersburg, coincided with his return from a visit to his home city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan. 
 
 Two Kyrgyz government sources told Reuters that Jalilov made the trip in February, leaving in early March on a flight to Moscow. 
 
 Osh is part of the Fergana Valley, a fertile strip of land that straddles Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and is mainly populated by ethnic Uzbeks. It has a tradition of Islamist radicalism and hundreds of people have set out from the area to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. 
 
 Jalilov had previously lived in St Petersburg for several years. It was not clear where he had been living before his trip back to Osh, or why he moved to a new apartment. 
 
 SILENT TENANT 
 
 The apartment Jalilov rented in St Petersburg is about 20 km from the site of the explosion, in the center of the city. 
 
 Neighbors at the building said that Jalilov had first moved into apartment 109 around a month ago. They said the young man they had seen around the building matched pictures of Jalilov released to Russian media since the bombing. 
 
 "The apartment was always silent," said a resident of the same staircase, who gave her name as Margarita. "When the owner let (the apartment) I asked her and she said he was a decent guy and that I should call her if he makes noise." 
 
 "But I never heard ... any music playing. Maybe he turned on the TV once." 
 
 She said on one occasion about five people who appeared ethnically Russian had visited him, but there seemed nothing remarkable about that. A second resident also said Jalilov had been a tenant in the building. 
 
 Security service officers arrived at the address on Tuesday, and ordered residents to vacate the building. 
 
 The building maintenance worker, who asked not to be identified, said: "They forced open the apartment. There were various powders in jars. I could see that they had packed up his things. Lots in black bags, and two boxes." 
 
 The Investigative Committee confirmed the search but a spokeswoman declined to give details about what they found. 
 
 Jalilov's parents, who say they had not seen their son for a while, were due to fly into St Petersburg on Wednesday and a Reuters witness at Pulkovo airport reported heavy security. 
 
 A middle-aged man and woman were escorted away after the flight arrived, the Reuters reporter said. Authorities refused to confirm that the couple were Jalilov's parents but the woman, in response to a Russian TV reporter's question, said she did not believe her son was the bomber. 
 
 In the several years Jalilov spent living in Russia, he blended into the millions of migrants from central Asia, and led an outwardly secular lifestyle. His profile on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, showed he was interested in pop music, fast cars, and boxer Mike Tyson. 
 
 His aunt, Surayo Jalilova, told Reuters in Osh: "We are speechless, we were all shocked, we never thought he could do something like this. He was the most obedient kid in the family, did well at school." 
 
 Fatima Kadyrakhunova, who was his class teacher for four years at School no. 26 in Osh, said he was quiet and reserved, but did not excel at his studies. 
 
 Six people of central Asian origin have been held on suspicion of recruiting for radical Islamist groups, but there is no proof linking the detainees to the metro bombing, Russian investigators said. 
 
 Meanwhile authorities have beefed up security across major cities, with sniffer dogs and bag checks at several metro stations in Moscow. 
 
 Putin touched on the attack at a previously scheduled meeting in Moscow with security service chiefs from ex-Soviet countries. 
 
 "We see that, unfortunately, the situation is not getting better and the clearest confirmation of that is the recent tragic incident in St Petersburg," Putin said. 
 
 "People died as a result of a terrorist act, many were hurt," he said. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Svetlana Reiter in MOSCOW, Hulkar Isamova in OSH, Kyrgyzstan, and Olzhas Auyezov in ALMATY; Writing by Sujata Rao and Christian Lowe; Editing by Giles Elgood)
– The suspect behind a deadly terrorist attack on a St. Petersburg subway station was a 23-year-old man from a former Soviet republic in Central Asia who had links to Islamist radical groups, according to reports in the Russian media. Reuters reports that officials in Kyrgyzstan have identified the suspect as Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Russian citizen born in the city of Osh. Officials say the toll from the attack has now hit 14, with up to 50 others injured by a bomb that exploded on a train between Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations Monday afternoon. A second bomb left at a different station failed to explode. Investigators believe Jalilov may have planted that device before blowing himself up on the train. The subway driver is being praised for continuing to the next station after the bomb went off, making it easier for rescuers to reach the wounded. According to Russian reports, the second bomb, which was packed with shrapnel and disguised as a fire extinguisher, would have done more damage than the first. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Vladimir Putin, who was visiting St. Petersburg at the time of the bombing, met with security chiefs Monday night, the Guardian reports. Earlier, he laid flowers at the Tekhnologichesky station. President Trump denounced the attack as "absolutely a terrible thing" and White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the US is willing to provide support, the AP reports.