Suicide bomber kills five in southern Russia

MAKHACHKALA: At least five people were killed and 35 wounded on Sunday when a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a military camp in Russia’s southern region of Dagestan, security officials said.

The bomber tried to drive a car containing about 50 kg of explosives onto a firing range where the 136th Motorcycle Brigade had set up camp outside the town of Buynaksk, about 50 km west of the local capital Makhachkala.

But soldiers blocked the bomber’s path with a military truck, preventing what investigators said would have been a much more deadly attack had the bomber reached tents where hundreds of soldiers were sleeping.

Russia is struggling to contain an upsurge of attacks in the mainly Muslim provinces along its southern flank by rebels who in March took their war to the Russian heartland with deadly bombings in the Moscow metro.

Local leaders say a potent mix of clan feuds, poverty, Islamic extremism and heavy-handed tactics by law enforcement agencies has driven youths into the hands of rebels who want to create a Sharia-based pan-Caucasus state.

There were conflicting reports of how many people were killed by the suicide bomber.

Two sources in law enforcement agencies in Dagestan said at least five people were killed but the Prosecutor-General’s office in Moscow said three people were killed and 34 wounded.

A spokesman for Russia’s defence ministry could not be reached for comment.

Russia’s Dagestan region has overtaken its neighbours as the epicenter of violence in theNorth Caucasus this year with a wave of bombings and shootings.

Bekmurza Bekmurzayev, a local minister in charge of national, religious and foreign affairs in Dagestan, was wounded on Saturday and his driver killed by a car bomb. – Reuters