MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Muslims on Thursday set up a council of experts to devise ways to tackle extremism, two weeks after a suicide bomb attack on the country’s busiest airport killed 36.

“People need to be protected from extremism and terrorism, and educated away from this,” said Ravil Gaynutdin, the chief Mufti of Russia, which is home to some 20 million Muslims, or a seventh of the population.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A suicide attack on Russia’s busiest airport shows Islamist rebel leader Doku Umarov is serious about inflicting “blood and tears” on the Russian heartland ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

Umarov, a 46-year-old rebel leader who styles himself as the Emir of the Caucasus, claimed responsibility for the Jan. 24 attack that killed 36 and said he had dozens of suicide bombers ready to unleash on Russian cities.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A suicide attack on Russia’s busiest airport shows Islamist rebel leader Doku Umarov is serious about inflicting “blood and tears” on the Russian heartland ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

Umarov, a 46-year-old rebel leader who styles himself as the Emir of the Caucasus, claimed responsibility for the January 24 attack that killed 36 and said he had dozens of suicide bombers ready to unleash on Russian cities.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Foreign experts could be invited by the Kremlin to look into the case of jailed ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky but his verdict will not be overturned, President Dmitry Medvedev’s human rights council said on Monday.

Khodorkovsky, in jail since 2003, was sentenced in December to six more years behind bars after what his supporters said was a politically motivated theft and money-laundering trial. The United States has sharply criticised the decision.

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) – A masked guard clad in camouflage pokes his AK-47 rifle into the shoulder of a vodka-guzzling client in a hotel bar in Russia’s Muslim Ingushetia region, and orders him to leave immediately.

The state-employed security guard then leads the man and his coterie of quiet revellers out of the dimly lit bar.

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) – Neiba scrapes out a meager income selling soil-caked clumps of wild garlic she picks in the forests of Russia’s poorest province — an occupation a growing Islamic insurgency has made increasingly hazardous.

“I will only go to the forest with my husband, and even then, we are terrified every time,” said Neiba, 43, as she adjusted her bright red hijab at the sprawling outdoor market in Nazran, Ingushetia’s largest town. “What if we see a rebel?”

MAGAS, Russia (Reuters) – Islamist insurgents from the North Caucasus were behind a suicide bomb attack that killed 35 people at Russia’s busiest airport, the head of the mainly Muslim province of Ingushetia said Thursday.

Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who heads an impoverished region neighbouring Chechnya, is the most senior Russian official to blame insurgents publicly for Monday’s attack on Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that those behind a deadly suicide attack on Russia’s busiest airport were unlikely to be from Chechnya, but analysts and media said North Caucasus militants were to blame.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the Monday attack which killed 35 and injured 100, including foreigners, and which bore the hallmark of Islamist rebels.