Investigators said yesterday the death toll in a suicide truck bombing of a police station in Russia’s North Caucasus on Monday has risen to 21.
Svetlana Gorbakova of the federal investigative agency said another victim died of her injuries in a hospital.
More than 130 people were wounded in the attack in the main police station in the city of Nazran.
It was the worst attack in the volatile North Caucasus region in years and undermines Kremlin claims that its efforts to bring calm and prosperity to the impoverished patchwork of ethnic groups, clans and religions were succeeding.
The attack also stoked fears that Ingushetia has replaced Chechnya as the next battleground in the southern Russian region.
“Every day something happens on [Ingushetia’s] ... territory,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told senior officials in the southern city of Astrakhan.
“They are all links in the same chain, all consequences of terrorist activity,” he said.
Medvedev sacked Ingushetia’s interior minister after the bombing, the latest in a string of assaults, linked by analysts to Islamist insurgents, against police and politicians in Russia’s poorest region, bordering Chechnya.
The bomb, packed into a yellow truck, exploded at the gates of the police station as officers lined up at the start of their day.
Wrecked cars were scattered around a 4m-wide crater.
Estimates of the size of the bomb varied, but a source in the local prosecutor’s office said it was equivalent to 1 tonne of TNT.
“The bomb could be heard throughout the city,” resident Timur Akiyev said.
Residents were evacuated from a neighboring apartment block, whose windows were shattered by the blast.
Moscow sent an airplane with doctors aboard and evacuated the severely injured to the Russian southern city of Vladikavkaz for immediate treatment, the emergencies ministry said.
“This act of terror could have been averted,” Medvedev said.
Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who is recovering after a suicide bomb attack in June, said Monday’s blast was aimed at destabilizing the region, which has overtaken Chechnya as Russia’s main area of violence in its south.
“This is a big blow to the Kremlin,” said Tatyana Lokshina, an activist with Human Rights Watch who travels regularly to the region.
“The number of attacks has been growing for a while, but I can’t remember one as brazen as this,” she said.
Rebellion in the northern Caucasus, where the Kremlin has fought two wars to subdue
The attack was the bloodiest in Ingushetia since 2004 when 92 people were killed when Chechen rebels took over the center of Nazran, said Kaloi Akhilgov, a spokesman for Yevkurov.
It was the biggest death toll from an attack in the North Caucasus since a similar attack on the city of Nalchik in 2005 in the nearby Kabardino-Balkaria region.
No one has claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack.
Web site www.kavkazcenter.com, which has links to the Chechen separatist movement, praised the attack by calling the suicide bomber a shakhid,” a word Islamist fighters use to describe martyrs.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
REVENGE: Trump said he had the support of the Syrian government for the strikes, which took place in response to an Islamic State attack on US soldiers last week The US launched large-scale airstrikes on more than 70 targets across Syria, the Pentagon said on Friday, fulfilling US President Donald Trump’s vow to strike back after the killing of two US soldiers. “This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media. “Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.” The US Central Command said that fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery targeted ISIS infrastructure and weapon sites. “All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned
Seven wild Asiatic elephants were killed and a calf was injured when a high-speed passenger train collided with a herd crossing the tracks in India’s northeastern state of Assam early yesterday, local authorities said. The train driver spotted the herd of about 100 elephants and used the emergency brakes, but the train still hit some of the animals, Indian Railways spokesman Kapinjal Kishore Sharma told reporters. Five train coaches and the engine derailed following the impact, but there were no human casualties, Sharma said. Veterinarians carried out autopsies on the dead elephants, which were to be buried later in the day. The accident site
RUSHED: The US pushed for the October deal to be ready for a ceremony with Trump, but sometimes it takes time to create an agreement that can hold, a Thai official said Defense officials from Thailand and Cambodia are to meet tomorrow to discuss the possibility of resuming a ceasefire between the two countries, Thailand’s top diplomat said yesterday, as border fighting entered a third week. A ceasefire agreement in October was rushed to ensure it could be witnessed by US President Donald Trump and lacked sufficient details to ensure the deal to end the armed conflict would hold, Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs Sihasak Phuangketkeow said after an ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur. The two countries agreed to hold talks using their General Border Committee, an established bilateral mechanism, with Thailand
RSS