Minsk residents bringing flowers, candles to entrance to bombed metro

MINSK, April 12 (Itar-Tass) - Late night Monday, residents of the
Belarussian capital Minsk were bringing flowers to and lighting candles at
the entrance to a downtown metro station where a powerful explosion
several hours before that had left eleven people dead and another 126,
wounded.
At the time of reporting, the Oktyabrskaya station where the incident
had occurred was closed and investigative activities were in full swing
there.
Police patrols were guarding the square on which the metro station is
located.
The situation had generally returned to normal in the area of the
station and the overland public transport resumed operations.
In the meantime, the explosion at a crowded metro junction produced a
real public shock in this generally quiet and safe country.
Discussions of the incident could be heard absolutely everywhere
Monday night - at shops, at bus stops, in cafes, and in the courtyards of
apartment blocks.
The authorities in the Belarussian capital were getting ready to call
a day of mourning for the victims of the blast. An instruction to this
effect had been issued by President Alexander Lukashenko, who official
residence is located in a stone's throw from the station.
The Minsk municipality offered a prompt reaction to the explosion the
rushed a big number of reserve busses to the city streets to prevent a
transport havoc.
The decision on the bringing the reserve busses into operation was
taken immediately after mass media reports on the explosion and the
temporary outage of the metro line where the Oktyabrskaya station is
located.
At the time of reporting, both lines of the Minsk metro were out of
operation, but official sources at Minsk municipality said the traffic
might reopen on one of them soon enough after the completion of
investigative actions.
As for the line on which the explosion occurred, it will most likely
return to normal operations in a day or two, the sources surmised.