Posted on September 10, 2010 - by Venik

Russians mourn car bomb victims

Vladikavkaz market remains cordoned off after suicide blast kills 17 and wounds more than 140

Flags flew at half-mast in the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz today as residents laid flowers in a square where a suicide car bomb killed 17 people and wounded more than 140.

Yesterday’s bombing, near the central market of the capital of the North Ossetia republic, was the most serious attack in Russia since the March metro bombings in Moscow that killed 40 people.

Of the wounded, 107 were in local hospitals and 11 severely injured victims had been flown to Moscow, the North Ossetian health minister, Vladimir Selivanov, said, according to the state news agency Itar-Tass.

In Dagestan, another republic in Russia’s violence-plagued North Caucasus region, officials said a policeman and a prison warden were shot dead in separate attacks.

The blast at the Vladikavkaz market was so powerful that glass in nearby buildings shattered. The area remained cordoned off today but had been cleaned up, with only the wrecks of several cars remaining.

A few blocks away, neighbours mourned two bombing victims – Yaselin Mamedova, 54, and Elnus Ashimov, nine – as their bodies were prepared for burial.

There has been no public claim of responsibility for the attack, but suspicion fell on Islamist militants who frequently launch small attacks in neighbouring North Caucasus republics, including Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Russia’s ethnically diverse North Caucasus region has been gripped by violence stemming from two separatist wars in Chechnya and fuelled by poverty and official corruption. Human rights groups say law enforcement officers frequently resort to extrajudicial killings, kidnappings and torture, which breed hostility and provoke retaliatory attacks.

Unlike the provinces of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, where Muslims make up most of the population, North Ossetia is predominantly Orthodox Christian but has a sizeable Muslim minority.

The Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, met Russia’s top Muslim cleric after the blast and said Russia’s 20 million Muslims should play a key role in eradicating Islamic extremism.

“The crimes like the one that was committed in the North Caucasus today are aimed at sowing enmity between our citizens. We mustn’t allow this,” Putin said.

Original article

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