Tweet
Chechnya blast kills at least 30
Monday, May 12, 2003 Posted: 7:08 AM EDT (1108 GMT)
MOSCOW, Russia -- At least 30 people were killed and many more injured on Monday when a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into government buildings in Chechnya, local officials said.
The blast in the town of Znamenskoye, north of the regional capital Grozny, was the most serious rebel attack since a Kremlin-organised constitutional referendum in March anchored the breakaway Muslim territory firmly in Russia.
Sultan Akhmetkhanov, head of the Nadterechny region, said the attack killed at least 30 people and injured two or three times that many.
Emergency workers were digging through the rubble Monday afternoon for victims of the bomb that exploded at 10:10 a.m. local time, Akhmetkhanov said.
The bomb left a crater two meters deep and 16 meters wide and destroyed at least eight houses, he said.
A defiant Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately said such attacks would not derail the Kremlin's peace plan for the region.
"The actions...were directed at stopping the process of bringing about a political settlement to the situation in Chechnya," Putin told a meeting of top government officials, according to Reuters. "We cannot allow anything like this to happen, nor will we."
The head of the pro-Moscow Chechen government, Akhmad Kadyrov, said security needed to be stepped up as a result of the bomb. "We need to be more vigilant and responsible so that no vehicles with explosives can travel around the territory of the republic.
"Where did this car with explosives come from? How did it get to Znamenskoye? I have many questions," he said.
Monday's attack comes five months after a truck-bomb attack on the headquarters of the Moscow-backed Chechen administration in Grozny killed at least 50 people.
Northern Chechnya is considered the most stable part of the region, The Associated Press reports. It was the first area to come under the control of Russian forces that entered the republic in 1999, starting the second war in a decade.
Monday, May 12, 2003 Posted: 7:08 AM EDT (1108 GMT)
MOSCOW, Russia -- At least 30 people were killed and many more injured on Monday when a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into government buildings in Chechnya, local officials said.
The blast in the town of Znamenskoye, north of the regional capital Grozny, was the most serious rebel attack since a Kremlin-organised constitutional referendum in March anchored the breakaway Muslim territory firmly in Russia.
Sultan Akhmetkhanov, head of the Nadterechny region, said the attack killed at least 30 people and injured two or three times that many.
Emergency workers were digging through the rubble Monday afternoon for victims of the bomb that exploded at 10:10 a.m. local time, Akhmetkhanov said.
The bomb left a crater two meters deep and 16 meters wide and destroyed at least eight houses, he said.
A defiant Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately said such attacks would not derail the Kremlin's peace plan for the region.
"The actions...were directed at stopping the process of bringing about a political settlement to the situation in Chechnya," Putin told a meeting of top government officials, according to Reuters. "We cannot allow anything like this to happen, nor will we."
The head of the pro-Moscow Chechen government, Akhmad Kadyrov, said security needed to be stepped up as a result of the bomb. "We need to be more vigilant and responsible so that no vehicles with explosives can travel around the territory of the republic.
"Where did this car with explosives come from? How did it get to Znamenskoye? I have many questions," he said.
Monday's attack comes five months after a truck-bomb attack on the headquarters of the Moscow-backed Chechen administration in Grozny killed at least 50 people.
Northern Chechnya is considered the most stable part of the region, The Associated Press reports. It was the first area to come under the control of Russian forces that entered the republic in 1999, starting the second war in a decade.
Comment