St. Petersburg honors bombing victims as investigation continues

— -- Scenes of quiet mourning commemorated Monday's deadly subway bombing in St. Petersburg today as family and friends remembered the 14 people killed and the 60 injured.

Police named 22 year-old Akbarjon Djalilov, who they believe detonated a backpack bomb packed with shrapnel, as a suspect in the attack.

Piles of red funeral flowers outside the two stations where the attack took place grew throughout the day as people trickled by them. A church service was held for the victims while local television aired portraits of them.

Stories of dreams cut short and heroism emerged as friends and family remembered loved ones.

It was the beginning of the second half of the school day and the train was carrying several students, including 17 year-old Mansur Sagadeev, who was studying to be a broadcast engineer and 18 year-old Ksenia Malyukova, a student at a midwifery college who loved cheerleading. Both perished in the attack.

The blast also caused horrific injuries. An 18 year-old girl who survived had her nose torn from her face, according to friends trying to raise money for reconstructive surgery.

Many others were burned or pierced by flying metal.

Irina Medyantseva, 50, a well-known doll-maker in the city, was fatally wounded while shielding her daughter, her relatives said. Medyantseva's daughter survived and is in intensive care. Her husband, Aleksander Kaminsky told the Russian network, RT, he kept thinking about a call he hadn’t made to them minutes before the explosion, believing it would have saved them.

“My call. Three minutes. A stop. They would have been on the next train,” Kaminsky told RT.

“I regret so much that I didn’t call,” he said.

Russian police are working to identify anyone who may have helped plan or carry out the attack. Today police arrested seven migrants from Central Asia in St. Petersburg on suspicion of recruiting for terrorist groups. A statement released by Russia’s Investigative Committee accused the men of working since 2015 to recruit people to commit terrorist acts and to fight abroad for terror groups, including the Islamic State and the former al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra.

Investigators also searched an apartment where they said Djalilov had been living before the attack. A woman, identified as Lyudmila, told state television she was Djalilov’s landlady. She described him as quiet and said that she had rarely seen him and he had only been living in the apartment for a month.

Born in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, the 22 year-old Djalilov moved to Russia several years ago, Kyrgyz authorities said. Investigators in Russia have said they are examining whether Djalilov had accomplices linked to the Islamic State but they have not said whether the men arrested today knew him.

A sense of normalcy began to return to the city, even as signs of beefed-up security remained and a series of false bomb scares were investigated without incident. Many residents took advantage of two unseasonably bright spring days following the bombing to linger on the streets and take in the sun. Many expressed pride at how residents immediately offered help after the attack, with hundreds of people offering free car rides to stranded commuters after the subway was shut down.

The Tekhnologichesky Institut subway station, which had been strewn with bodies on Monday, had already reopened the following day. On the platform today, people gathered in silence around a makeshift memorial of flowers and candles as crowds streamed on and off the trains.

“I love you Petersburg,” a middle-aged woman said loudly as she laid a flower and looked at the crowd.

“They wanted to frighten us but that’s stupid -- it’s only made us angry and brought us together,” said Pavel Polyakov, 39, an engineer who stopped at the memorial. “It’s completely pointless and very stupid.”