Russia: Suicide attacks in Chechnya kill 5

Suicide bombers on bicycles detonated explosives in Chechnya on Friday, killing at least four police officers and a civilian in coordinated attacks in the capital, officials said.

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ZUMA Press

Rescuers evacuate injured people at the site of a suicide bomb attack aimed against a local police station in the city of Nazran, a capital of North Caucasian public of Ingushetia, 17 August 2009. At least 19 people died and 69 injured when a suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into a police headquarters in the autonomous Russian republic of Ingushetia, reported Interfax news agency. The attack occurred in the city of Nazran, a spokesman for the state prosecutor‘s office told Interfax. The spokesman said the bomber drove his car into the door of the police headquarters and detonated what was believed to have been 50 kilograms of explosives

The suicide bombers approached police officers in two central locations in Grozny and blew themselves up, killing two officers in each attack, said Chechnya's Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov in televised remarks.

Russian emergency services spokesman Alexei Zemskov said three other people were wounded. An Associated Press reporter saw body parts scattered at the sites of both attacks, which come at the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

While large-scale battles ended years ago in predominantly Muslim Chechnya, which has been ravaged by two separatist wars since 1994, Islamic militants have continued daily hit-and-run raids against police and other authorities, and the violence has increasingly spilled into neighboring provinces.

Friday's violence followed Monday's suicide bombing of a police station in neighboring Ingushetia that killed 25 people and injured more than 160 in the deadliest attack in the volatile North Caucasus region in years.

A Chechen rebel group calling itself the Riyadus Salikhin Martyrs' Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack in Nazran in a statement posted Friday on a Web site sympathetic to Chechen rebels. The claim could not be independently confirmed, but officials also said the attack had been mounted by militants seeking to avenge recent security raids.

The bombing in Ingushetia and the new attacks in Chechnya unraveled Kremlin claims that it has managed to bring calm and prosperity to the impoverished region's patchwork of ethnic groups, clans and religions.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev acknowledged earlier this week that militants continued to mount a strong challenge to stability in the North Caucasus region.

Russian news reports initially said there were several other explosions in Grozny Friday, but officials said there were only two.

It is the first reported case of suicide bombers using bicycles, although such attacks have happened in Afghanistan.

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Associated Press Writer Sergei Venyavsky in Rostov-on-Don contributed to this report.