Foreign Correspondence

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Deaths in North Caucasus blasts
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
12:34 Mecca time, 09:34 GMT



At least 12 people have been killed and another 18 injured in two bomb blasts in Russia's
volatile North Caucasus region, two days after a deadly attack on Moscow's transport network.

The first blast occurred in the town of Kizlyar in the southern province of Dagestan on
Wednesday morning, when car bomb near a school was detonated, killing two police officers.

Rashid Nurgaliyev, Russia's interior minister, said the bomb went off as police tried to stop the suspicious-looking car.

He said as police and residents gathered at the scene of the blast a
suicide bomber, wearing a police uniform, approached and detonated a set of explosives.

A high proportion of those killed were policemen, authorities said, including the town's police chief.

The blasts come just two days after twin suicide bomb attacks in Moscow's metro system killed 39 people and injured scores.

Russian officials have blamed Muslim separatist fighters from the North Caucasus for those attacks.

Volatile region

The North Caucasus has been the site of two wars in Chechnya and hundreds
of violent attacks since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

in depth .. North Caucasus: A history of violence
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/08/2009817141410883512.html
Timeline: Attacks in Russia
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/201032952371134.html
Interview: Dagestan's 'spiritual conscience'
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/10/20091028134232476.html
People and Power: Ingushetia- A second Chechnya?
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2009/10/20091028615251646.html
Inside Story: Unrest in the Caucasus
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2009/08/200981971219257596.html

Violence has spread from Chechnya to the neighbouring regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia.

In February, Doku Umarov, the leader of a Chechen opposition group, said in an interview on a separatist-
affiliated website that "the zone of military operations will be extended to the territory of Russia".

Umarov, who claimed responsibility for the bombing of a passenger train travelling between
Moscow and St Petersburg in November, warned that "the war is coming to their cities".

Monday's attack - the deadliest in the Russian capital in six years - has
fuelled fears of a broader offensive by separatists based in the North Caucasus.

Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister who led Moscow into a war against Chechen separatists in 1999, said
on Tuesday that those behind the bombings must be scraped "from the bottom of the sewers" and exposed.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/201033153247529911.html