'Emirate of Caucasus behind Moscow blasts'

A Chechen militant leader has claimed responsibility for the deadly twin blasts in Moscow metro two days ago which claimed 39 lives, a United States-based intelligence monitoring group reported on Wednesday.

"Doku Umarov, the leader of the Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus, claimed responsibility for Monday's metro bombings in Moscow in a Russian-language video released today," said SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors radical Islamist forums and websites.

"The four minute, 27 second video, recorded on March 29, was posted on YouTube and reported by Kavkaz Center, a media outlet for Chechen fighters," the intelligence group said in a media brief.

"Kavkaz Center reported in an English-language post that Umarov declared the twin suicide bombings to be retaliation for killings of Chechen and Ingush people in Arshty, a village on the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia, on February 11," it said.

"Umarov indicated that the metro attacks were organised by his personal order, and that attacks in Russia will continue. He also reminded of a pledge he made in a visual interview in January, 2010, that Russians will see the war come to their home," SITE Intelligence Group said.

However, the authenticity of the video could not be independently confirmed. The twin bomb attack on Moscow metro is the worst terror strike in the city in six years which the authorities have linked to militants from the North Caucasus.