Putin says terror suspects can be killed ‘on the spot’

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that armed terrorists should be “liquidated on the spot,” calling the blast that tore through a Saint Petersburg supermarket and wounded 14 people an “act of terror.”

Yesterday, a homemade bomb placed in a locker at the supermarket in northwestern Saint Petersburg went off sowing panic among customers and wounding 14 people including a pregnant woman.

“As you know, an act of terror took place in Saint Petersburg yesterday,” Putin says, speaking at a ceremony to award officers who took part in Russia’s Syria campaign.

He says he had ordered the nation’s security services to “act decisively” and “liquidate bandits on the spot” if armed militants put up resistance.

His spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters later that the Russian leader was referring to all those “who harbor plans to carry out acts of terror in our country.”

— AFP