Bomb Explodes at Russian Security Agency, Wounding 3 Workers

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Emergency service vehicles near local headquarters of the Federal Security Service, left, in Arkhangelsk, Russia, on Wednesday.CreditCreditRussian Investigative Committee, via Associated Press

By Ivan Nechepurenko

Oct. 31, 2018

MOSCOW — An explosive device detonated inside an office of Russia’s main security agency on Wednesday, wounding three workers and killing the person who carried it, the Russian authorities said.

The explosion at the local headquarters of the Federal Security Service in the northern city of Arkhangelsk was labeled a terrorist act by the Russian Investigative Committee, which is responsible for high-profile crimes and is investigating. It said in a statement that the attacker was a 17-year-old local resident, but did not offer any other information.

“According to preliminary information, the person entered the building, took an unknown item out of a bag, which exploded shortly after in his hands,” the Russian Antiterrorism Committee said in a statement.

“He suffered injuries that killed him,” it said. “Three employees of the Federal Security Service were injured.”

The authorities were working to identify the explosive device, said Igor A. Orlov, the local governor. People were evacuated from the building, and security measures were increased around the city, he said in a short briefing.

A successor to the Soviet K.G.B., the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., is Russia’s principal security agency. Its offices are heavily guarded, and its officers enjoy wide powers.

President Vladimir V. Putin, who headed the F.S.B. for a brief period in the 1990s, was informed about the attack, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told journalists.

Russia has enjoyed a period of relative calm this year, after a bombing on the St. Petersburg subway system in April 2017 killed 16 people, including the attacker.

Terrorist acts occurred regularly in Russia following the Soviet collapse, with particularly intense periods when the Kremlin waged wars against Islamic separatists in Chechnya, a republic in the North Caucasus.