The plotters and some of the suicide bombers involved in the recent Moscow metro blasts have been identified, a government official said Friday.
Russian police and the Federal Security Council have found organizers and some executors of the bombings that killed 40 people in the Moscow metro and 12 others in Dagestan, the National Counter-terrorism Committee official told the Interfax news agency.
One of the suicide bombers was identified through DNA and forensic expertises, as well as in the identification procedure by witnesses, Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Investigative Committee of Russian Prosecutor General's Office told Itar-Tass.
"The investigation and the search operation are underway in order to identify the second suicide bomber, as well as the masterminds and terror contractors," the spokesman said.
One of the female suicide bombers, who blew herself up at the Park Kultury metro station, was identified as Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, a source with the National Counter-terrorism Committee told Russia media.
The Kommersant daily has said Abdurakhmanova, aged 17, was the widow of Dagestani militant leader Umalat Magomedov, who was killed by federal forces in 2009.
The daily also reported that the second bomber has been tentatively identified as 20-year-old Markha Ustarkhanova from Chechnya. The paper said she was the widow of a militant leader killed last October while preparing to assassinate Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who is backed by the Kremlin.
Female suicide bombers from the North Caucasus are referred to in Russia as "black widows" because many of them are the wives, or other relatives, of militants killed by security forces.