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Young man recounts subway bombing

Alyaksandr Aleksandryya, a student at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts and a video broadcast engineer with the STV television channel, recounted his experience during the subway bombing that occurred in Minsk on April 11, 2011.

Speaking outside the House of Justice, where the trial of the two bombing suspects began on Thursday, the young man said, "I was traveling in the subway train in company with my friend, an Iranian. Fortunately, he was not hurt. As I was stepping out of the car, an explosion occurred and I fell down. A fragment of marble or a bench got stuck in my leg."

"There was dead silence after the blast, there were no cries. People lay around in silence. A woman near me reached for a cell phone, called her family and said, 'I have lost a leg.' A guy ran over to me and asked me if he could help. I told him to take my scarf and wind it around the leg near the knee. He did so and ran away."

"As the casualties were carried out on stretchers, some people were in deep shock, some even did not want to help. The stretchers fell down, people simply walked away, we asked for help and they looked at us and walked away. But there was no panic," the man said.

"I was brought to the interior ministry's hospital where I was operated on by experienced surgeons. But as my leg started turning blue due to insufficient blood supply, I was taken to the hospital in Barawlyany, where they used special equipment to restore the leg's blood supply. The treatment course gave me hope that I will walk again. I have been receiving hospital treatment for five months. I have been given the status of having second-degree disability that will expire in a year's time. I believe I will be back to normal before the end of this period."

"All that the government paid me was a paltry amount of 3.5 million rubels. Hopefully, a rehabilitation course at a health resort will help me," he said, adding that his workmates had raised funds for him but the channel made no payouts. //BelaPAN