Main escape routes THE bombing began shortly after lunch.
I was talking quietly to a Chechen man in what I thought was a safe house when the unmistakeable sound of a bomb falling nearby stunned us into silence. We stumbled into our shoes and grabbed warm clothes. It only takes half a minute from the moment your brain registers danger until the time you arrive in a safer place, but that time stretches like hours. A young boy raced into the house and brought them out, along with blankets and a kerosene lamp. I ran and jumped into the blackness of the bunker, a 10ft-square hole in the garden where two old women wrapped in blankets and headscarves were already cowering with fear.