Suicide Bomber Strikes At Russian Market

[chowka]

Suicide Bomber Strikes At Russian Market

3:44pm Thursday September 09, 2010
Rob Cole

At least 17 people have died in a suicide car bombing at a market in Russia's North Caucasus region.

The bomber drove his car into a market square in the city of Vladikavkaz, southern Russia, before detonating the explosives. Around 130 people were wounded in the attack. No one has claimed responsibility. Footage from the scene showed widespread damage around the market with many cars destroyed.

"The blast in Vladikavkaz has been organised by a suicide bomber who drove up to the entrance of the market in a Volga 3102 car," said Taimuraz Mamsurov, a senior North Ossetian official. "The headless body of the presumed terrorist was found in the car which exploded opposite the central market."

The bomber struck in a busy market square

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, ordered his envoy for the Russian North Caucasus region, Alexander Khloponin, to urgently fly to Vladikavkaz. He described the bombers as "bastards". "We will do everything to capture these monsters... these bastards, who carried out a terrorist act on ordinary people," Mr Medvedev said. "We will do everything to find and punish them." Vladikavkaz is the capital of the North Ossetia republic, in the North Caucasus, which has been beset by Islamist and separatist violence.

Around 130 people were injured in the Vladikavkaz attack

North Ossetia is where 331 people died in the 2004 Beslan school siege. The market was bombed in 1999, killing 55, in 2001 killing six people and again in 2004, with 11 people losing their lives. It the region is north of the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia over which Moscow and Tbilisi fought a war in August 2008.

It is also the only majority Christian region in Russia's largely Muslim North Caucasus. The neighbouring Muslim region of Ingushetia has been hit by a wave of deadly attacks over the last months. However, North Ossetia has largely escaped the worst of the violence.

 

[chobolan]

Car bomb kills 16 at market in Russia's Caucasus


Car bomb kills 16 at market in Russia's Caucasus

By Kazbek Basayev
VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia | Thu Sep 9, 2010 4:31pm EDT

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed himself and 16 other people in a huge blast near a busy market in Russia's North Caucasus on Thursday in a new blow to Kremlin efforts to rein in a growing Islamic insurgency. More than 100 people were wounded in the attack in Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia province, authorities said.

The bomber detonated an explosive packed with metal bars, bolts and ball bearings in a car outside the entrance to the market, the prosecutor general's Investigative Committee said. A Reuters witness saw at least five bloodied bodies lying among scattered vegetables and shattered glass near the market entrance about 10 meters from a burning car.

Car alarms wailed as firefighters doused the flames from a car blackened and mangled from the explosion. People used pieces of wood as makeshift stretchers for the wounded. The bombing in mostly Orthodox Christian North Ossetia challenges Kremlin efforts to tackle a growing Islamic insurgency in the neighboring, mainly Muslim North Caucasus provinces of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.

"Criminals like those who acted today in the North Caucasus hope to sow hatred between our peoples," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told Russia's chief mufti, Russian news agencies reported. "We have no right to let this happen." The bomb was the equivalent of 30-40 kg of TNT, the Investigative Committee said.

A North Ossetia Health Ministry official said 15 people died at the scene, not including the suspected attacker, and a one-year-old boy died in the hospital. Three suspects connected to the blast were detained, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov said, without giving details, Itar-Tass news agency reported. President Barack Obama expressed condolences.

"This bombing further underscores the resolve of the United States and Russia to work together in combating terrorism and protecting our people," a White House statement said.

BESLAN

"What has happened is the latest outbreak of the criminal activity of bandits with whom there can be no compromise, no truce," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in televised comments. Medvedev, who has called the North Caucasus unrest Russia's most severe political problem, said those behind the attack would be tracked down and brought to justice -- or killed if they resisted arrest.

North Ossetia, where 331 people died in the 2004 Beslan school siege, was targeted in attacks during the two post-Soviet wars between Russian forces and separatist rebels in Chechnya. At least 50 people were killed in a bomb blast at the same market in 1999, the year the Kremlin launched its second war to drive separatists from power in Chechnya.

Enmity between Christian Ossetians and Muslim Ingush persists two decades after a territorial dispute flared into armed conflict. North Ossetia police said the car blown up on Thursday came from Ingushetia, Russian news agencies reported. The attack was made as Russia's Muslims marked the end of the fasting month of Ramadan with the feast of Uraza-Bairam, or Eid al-Fitr.

North Ossetia has seen relatively little violence in recent years as an Islamist insurgency rooted in the Chechen wars has gained momentum in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan. Islamist militants, who call Russians "occupiers" and advocate a sharia-law state in the North Caucasus, claimed responsibility for suicide blasts that killed 40 people in Moscow's metro in March.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk; Writing by Conor Humphries and Steve Gutterman; Editing by Paul Taylor)

 

[chobolan]

People help victims after a blast in Vladikavkaz September 9, 2010.

A general view shows a blast site in Vladikavkaz, September 9, 2010.



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[chobolan]

A serviceman gestures at a blast site in Vladikavkaz September 9, 2010.

People mourn at a blast site in Vladikavkaz September 9, 2010.



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