Car bomb kills 15 at market in Russia's Caucasus

Vladikavkaz, Russia: A suicide bomber set off a powerful blast near a busy market in Russia's restive North Caucasus on Thursday, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens, authorities said.

The attacker detonated a bomb packed with metal bars, bolts and ball bearings in a car outside the entrance to the market in Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia province, the Russian 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, around 10 metres from a burning car. "Where is the ambulance?" a woman said, sobbing.

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 is a fresh blow to the Kremlin, which is struggling to rein in a growing Islamic insurgency in the neighbouring, 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 attack came after an Islamist website said a fire that knocked a hydroelectric power plant in Dagestan out of commission this week was caused by bombs planted by rebels. Nobody was hurt and supplies were not affected, officials said.

Taimuraz Mamsurov, North Ossetia's top official, said a headless body was found in the wrecked car at the market, ITAR-TASS reported. He said the car was passing the market when it exploded, but the Investigative Committee said it was parked.

The bomb was the equivalent of 30-40 kg of TNT, the Investigative Committee said. At least 15 people were killed and 77 wounded.

BESLAN

Officials later said about 100 people were injured, and state-run RIA cited a Vladikavkaz city official as saying an injured one-year-old boy had died, bringing the toll to 16.

President Dmitry Medvedev, who has called the North Caucasus unrest Russia's most severe political problem, ordered his envoy to the North Caucasus to fly to the region, the Kremlin said.

"What has happened is the latest outbreak of the criminal activity of bandits with whom there can be no compromise, no truce," Medvedev said in televised comments.

All classes were cancelled at North Ossetia's schools after the blast, and Friday will be a day of mourning in the province.

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.

Ethnic enmity between Christian Ossetians and Muslim Ingush persists two decades after a territorial dispute erupted into armed conflict.

North Ossetia police said the sedan blown up on Thursday came from Ingushetia, Russian news agencies reported.

Seeking to avert tension, Ingushetia's president sent Mamsurov a condolence telegram condemning the attack, which came as Russia's Muslims marked the end 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.

On Wednesday, unofficial Islamist website www.kavkazcenter.com said two bombs had detonated at the Irganaisky hydroelectric power plant in Dagestan, while a third had failed to explode.

Prosecutors and emergency officials said Wednesday that a fire at the plant was caused by an accident.

But Russian news agencies, citing a local law enforcement source, reported on Thursday that a bomb had been found at the plant and defused. Interfax cited a security official as saying traces of explosives were found where the fire broke out.

Islamist militants who call Russians "occupiers" and advocate a sharia-law state in the North Caucasus have vowed to attack "economic targets" inside and outside the Caucasus. They claimed responsibility for suicide blasts that killed 40 people in Moscow's metro in March.

In July, masked attackers stormed a power plant in the North Caucasus province of Kabardino-Balkaria, shot dead two guards and set off bombs that brought the station to a halt.