TALLINN - Two people were seriously wounded during a bomb explosion in a residential Tallinn district on the morning of Sept. 3. According to the police, the explosive device went off when a 54-year-old house cleaner, Lyudmila, together with the house concierge identified as Pyotr, 55, found and opened a bag in a phone booth near 68 Pae Street.
Both were taken to a hospital in critical condition.
Police have opened a criminal investigation, but it is yet unclear what type of explosive was used and what motive could have caused the crime. The phone booth is reportedly used by drug addicts for contacting dealers.
Suspiciously, it was the eighth such explosion on Pae Street in the last six years. The security police, the law enforcement unit dealing with particularly serious crimes, is still investigating previous explosions.
So far the main conclusion, based on prior explosions, is a score settling between criminal groups.
The first explosion took place in May 1998 near a shopping center. In December of that same year, the entire section of a three-story building at 48 Pae Street was demolished by a powerful bomb; one woman and her two-year-old grandchild died.
Between April 2000 and May 2004 a house located at 23 Pae Street endured five explosions. While nobody was injured during the first two explosions, the following two killed one and injured seven people. The May 2004 explosion resulted with smashed windows in the building and its neighbor house.
