Website With Qaeda Ties Publishes Claim on St. Petersburg Bombing<br />By IVAN NECHEPURENKO and RUKMINI CALLIMACHIAPRIL 25, 2017<br />MOSCOW — A website that has previously carried Al Qaeda messages on Tuesday issued a claim of responsibility for the recent subway bombing<br />in St. Petersburg, Russia, publishing a statement from a previously unknown cell said to be working on behalf of the terrorist group.<br />The previously unknown group claiming responsibility, the Imam Shamil Battalion, said in its statement<br />that Mr. Dzhalilov had acted on the orders of Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Al Qaeda, according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist propaganda.<br />Muslim said that This operation is only the beginning, and what is to come will make you forget it,<br />Experts urged caution because the website, Agence Nouakchott d’Information, or ANI, is associated with Al Qaeda’s branches in Africa<br />and is not a normal venue for the terrorist group’s claims of responsibility from elsewhere in the world.<br />Mr. Dzhalilov was a native of Kyrgyzstan who had a Russian passport and had lived in St. Petersburg for at least five years before the attack.<br />The St. Petersburg attack was the first major attack in a large urban center in Russia since twin bombings rocked central Volgograd in 2013.
