A suicide bomber attacked Volgograd Railway Station in southern Russia, killing at least 16 people and injured dozens more.  It’s the second deadly attack in three days as Russia counts down towards the 2014 Winter Olympics.  It happened 700 kilometers from the site of the Olympics.

The orange flash was caught on security cameras blasting through the Soviet-era train station. Authorities said the attacker detonated a metal shrapnel-filled bomb in front of a metal detector just inside the main entrance.  The station was busier than usual, with crowds of people on the move before the New Year’s holiday.  Some reports say at least two children were among the dead.

“People were lying on the ground, screaming and calling for help,” witness Alexander Koblyakov told Russian TV.  “I helped carry out a police officer whose head and face were covered in blood.  He couldn't speak.”

Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, sits along the restive Russian Caucuses, where Islamist separatists operate in Chechnya and Dagestan.  Remains of a female found in the rubble inside Volograd Station are believed to be a woman from Dagestan, identified in some media reports as “Oksana Aslanova”, a woman with ties to Islamist movements in the Caucuses (warning: graphic content).

Friday, a car bomb killed three people in the city of Pyatigorsk.