by Christopher Boian
MOSCOW, Sept 1 (AFP) - It was a cool late summer evening and the pavement was bustling with end-of-summer shoppers when Rizhsky market, one of Moscow's busiest commercial and transport junctions, became with a flash a theater of human butchery.
"The most horrible thing was seeing a man walking around looking for a piece of his body," said Alexei Borodin, a 29-year-old local resident who was walking out of a nearby store when the explosion occurred.
"I was walking out of a nearby store when the blast went off and the first thing I saw were torn up bodies.
"Some people were trying to stand up, but they were no longer people," he said. "There were people without parts of of their bodies. My mother told me -- 'We are walking on human remains'."
Sirens wailed as ambulances and police vehicles rushed to and from the scene where officials said at least 10 people had been killed and 51 wounded in an attack by a female suicide bomber.
A pall of smoke hovered over the scene as police quickly cordoned off an area around both entrances to a modern shopping complex and the entrance to the metro station that serves it.
But traffic on surrounding streets became gridlocked and the area filled with bystanders, many too shocked to speak.
Local residents placed small Russian icons and fresh flowers and lighted candles on the surrounding pavement, Russian media said.
"I live in the neighboring building and when I heard the explosion I rushed over here," one woman said, quoted by ITAR-TASS.
"I'm so sorry for these people. I heard that there were children among the victims, so I brought flowers and a little icon."
Rizhsky has been the site of a fresh produce market for many years, but was transformed after the breakup of the Soviet Union into a modern commercial center with a large grocery store, fashionable clothing outlets and restaurants.
A woman whose arm was wrapped from the elbow to the hand in white gauze said she had returned from summer vacation on Monday and had come to the market to make last-minute school supply purchases for her children, who start school this week.
"This is horrible, and I'm one of the lucky ones," the woman said as she climbed into the passenger seat of a car, one of those fortunate enough to walk away from the attack.
The Rizhsky shopping center and metro are located across a busy avenue from Moscow's Rizhskaya train station, making the area one of the busiest in the Russian capital.
But subway traffic through the station was closed and trains passed by platforms without stopping for hours after the attack, which was quickly blamed by Russian authorities on an unidentified female suicide bomber.
"I was driving over Rizhsky bridge and I witnessed the explosion," a 24-year-old identified by ITAR-TASS as Andrei said.
"There was a huge blast that set two cars on fire. People panicked and ran in all directions. I saw two wounded women who flagged down a car and went to the hospital by themselves."
In a posting on an Islamic website, a group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed to continue strikes in Russia in support of rebels in the separatist republic of Chechnya.