Huge Explosion Kills Two, Injures 15 Near Chechnya

Overturned cars lay crumpled in a pile near the charred FSB building in Ingushetia’s capital, Magas. An Associated Press reporter saw at least one dead body inside one of the cars.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the Federal Security Service had been leading the Russian campaign against Chechen fighters. It recently handed control over to the Interior Ministry – a shift officials called a sign that situation in Chechnya was becoming more stable.

An Emergency Situations Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that at least two people were killed and 15 injured, four of them seriously. The ITAR-Tass news agency later reported that four were dead and as about 40 injured.
Dozens of police surrounded the building and the immediate area.

The injured were being transported to area hospitals. A doctor, who declined to give his name, said that at least 15 were injured.

Muslim Dudarov, who works in a nearby building, said that the force of the blast threw him out of his office and into the building’s lobby. He said that numerous people were hit by flying glass.

Russia has been wracked in recent months by bombings, most of which the government has blamed on Chechens.

A series of bomb attacks in and around Chechnya and in Moscow has killed more than 150 people in the past five months. On an Aug. 1, a truck packed with explosives rammed through the gates of a military hospital in North Ossetia, which borders Chechnya and Ingushetia, blowing up and killing 50 people.

Increase in attacks

Tens of thousands of Chechen refugees have been living in Ingushetia after fleeing fighting in their republic.

Chechen fighters had vowed to increase their attacks on Russian targets ahead of Kremlin-organised presidential elections in the republic on 5 October.
The Magas blast comes in the wake of a similar attack on 1 August, in which a truck bomb killed over 50 people and injured more than 80 others at a military hospital in the city of Mozdok in the Russian republic of North Ossetia.