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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)