An explosion believed caused by a bomb ripped through a subway station next to the office of Belarus’s authoritarian president on Monday evening, killing at least 11 people, wounding more than 100 and worsening the already tense political situation there.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast in Minsk, the Belarus capital, but witnesses described being hit by a wave of shrapnel that they said was contained in a bomb.

While Muslim separatists from southern Russia have carried out deadly suicide bombings in the Moscow subway system, including one last year, they have never done so in Minsk. Belarus, a former Soviet republic with a population of 10 million, does not have a Muslim insurgency, and Mr. Lukashenko, who has tightly controlled the country since 1994, has portrayed himself as a stabilizing force.

But Belarus has faced political turmoil since Mr. Lukashenko’s reelection in December, which was denounced by his rivals as rigged. When opposition parties conducted a large protest on election night, the security services responded with a far-reaching crackdown, sending riot police to break it up violently and arresting hundreds of people.

The president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, indicated in comments late Monday night that he believed that the explosion was terrorism. Prosecutors said their inquiry was focusing on a bomb: “I don’t exclude the possibility that this present was brought from the outside,” he said sarcastically, in remarks broadcast on state television. “But we also should look at ourselves.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/europe/12belarus.html?src=mv