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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| More bombs explode in Dagestan |
| 2005-06-27 |
| In a sign of the growing instability in the Caucasus region of Russia, four bombs exploded in the southern republic of Dagestan during the weekend. Two of the bombs on Saturday wounded six police officers in the regional capital, Makhachkala, and one derailed a cargo train, wounding two men. The fourth blast occurred outside a school in Khasavyurt. No one immediately claimed responsibility, and it was not clear who was behind the blasts. Another explosion, the fifth during the weekend, hit a police vehicle Sunday, wounding a police officer, officials told The Associated Press in Makhachkala. The explosion occurred shortly after midnight, according to Marina Rasulova, a spokeswoman for the police. Dagestan, an autonomous Russian republic on the Caspian Sea, is on Chechnya's eastern border and has been both a source of fighters in the long-simmering war there and an area where Chechens have sought refuge. It has had its own internal divisions and unrest as well, and bombings, arrests, skirmishes and the discovery of weapons caches or explosives have been regular occurrences there this year. In May, a senior Dagestan government official was killed in an explosion. The victim was Zagir Arukhov, the information and nationalities minister, who was killed as he entered the stairway of his apartment building in Makhachkala. The first two of the bombs during the weekend showed signs of tactical sophistication, and greater harm was avoided in the third explosion because it was a cargo train, not a passenger train, that detonated a freshly laid explosive. The first bomb exploded at 12:40 a.m. in Makhachkala. The explosion disabled a police vehicle and wounded two police sergeants, according to RIA Dagestan, a regional news agency. Interfax, a Russian news agency, reported that the men had been spared more serious injury because they had been driving with flak jackets draped over the vehicle's side windows - a sign of just how dangerous police officers believe patrols in Dagestan to be. The first blast was apparently used as bait, which is a tactic often used by fighters in Chechnya. Fifteen minutes after the explosion, as investigators were examining the scene, a second hidden bomb detonated about 35 meters, or 115 feet, from the first, wounding four senior police officers. An hour later, at 1:55 a.m. a powerful bomb placed on the tracks between Kurush and Suvak exploded. It was detonated by a pressure switch that was set off as the train passed over it. The bomb derailed the locomotive and four flatcars, injuring the engine driver and a crew member, according to Akhmed Magomayev, the chief of staff of the local transportation police, RIA Dagestan reported. More than 100 meters of the rail was damaged, and train service in the republic was delayed throughout the day. The explosion in Khasavyurt damaged the school but wounded no one, the Russian news agencies reported. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |