Suspect Named in Apartment Blasts

As the death toll in Monday’s bombing of a Moscow apartment building reached 118, making it the worst in a recent wave of terrorist attacks, police launched a massive security blitz in the capital Tuesday and named a prime suspect in the case.

Authorities linked the suspect to one of the Islamic rebel leaders fighting Russian forces in the volatile southern republic of Dagestan, which neighbors separatist Chechnya.

But Russia’s answers to the terrorist bombings--checking identification papers in markets, airports, railway stations and other public places, tightening immigration and reinforcing the border with Chechnya--underscored the helplessness of authorities in the face of the attacks.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin on Tuesday ruled out a state of emergency but called for tough measures against Chechen rebels, whom Russian authorities blame for the bombings of two large apartment blocks only five days apart that killed at least 210 people.

Russian security officials have accused Shamil Basayev and another figure known as Khattab, both leaders of the mainly Chechen rebel force fighting in Dagestan, of masterminding the attacks. But both men, not shy about past attacks on Russia, have denied any part in the recent bombings.

Khattab, a Jordanian- or Saudi-born fighter who films his group’s attacks on Russian soldiers and publishes them on the Internet, told reporters Tuesday in Grozny, the Chechen capital, that he wouldn’t attack sleeping women and children, only soldiers.

Security officials released composite pictures of Denis Saitakov, whom they named as the prime suspect in the bombings. Saitakov flew to the southern Russian city of Nalchik the day after last Wednesday’s bombing of an apartment block in southeastern Moscow, which killed at least 92 people. They claimed that Saitakov had spent time at a Chechen training base run by Khattab.

Monday’s bombing of an eight-story building in southern Moscow was the fourth explosion in two weeks in the country. The first blast, at a shopping mall near the Kremlin on Aug. 31, left one dead; in the second, a car bomb destroyed an apartment building of Russian military families in the Dagestani town of Buynaksk on Sept. 4, killing 64 people.

The death toll in Monday’s bombing could be higher than 118, with rescuers removing from the site body parts of unidentified people.

In a huge operation Tuesday, thousands of police officers in Moscow and other large cities targeted people from the Caucasian republics and others with slightly darker complexions than the majority of Russians. Police inspected trucks and buildings, checked registration papers and detained people without proper documents.

Under enormous pressure to show progress, Interior Minister Vladimir B. Rushailo met President Boris N. Yeltsin to discuss results of the investigation and announced that police had discovered a large cache of explosives and a fuse in another Moscow building.

Addressing the Duma, the lower house of parliament, Putin described the separatist Chechen republic as “a huge terrorist camp” and announced a tougher border regime with Chechnya, economic sanctions against Chechnya and ruthless attacks against rebel fighters in Dagestan. Chechnya won de facto independence from Russia in a 1994-96 war.