Dozens hurt in Chechen blast
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Investigators in Grozny examine a crater caused by Friday's bomb.
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MOSCOW, Russia -- A truck bomb has exploded near a government building in Chechnya's regional capital in a failed attack that killed two suicide bombers and wounded dozens of others, officials said.
Emergency officials said at least 36 people were injured in Friday's blast that left a huge hole in the street. Four were taken to hospital.
"The truck was driving towards the complex of government buildings, but exploded before it got there," Khamid Adayev, deputy head of Chechnya's Interior Ministry, told Interfax news agency.
Prosecutor General of Chechnya Vladimir Kravchenko said the site of the explosion was about 15 meters from the headquarters of the special police and also not far from another police building.
"According to preliminary information, this was a car with explosives," an unnamed source quoted by Interfax said.
Friday's explosion came a day before the Chechen State Council, the republic's temporary legislature, was due to have convened in the building that was hastily built to replace the government headquarters wrecked in a car bomb last December. At least 70 people were killed by that attack.
The attack took place just hours after President Vladimir Putin said the only way forward in the rebel region was to follow the peace blueprint laid out by the Kremlin.
Russian troops have been fighting to quell separatist rebel fighting for more than a decade in a conflict that has cost tens of thousands of lives.
Government buildings have become preferred targets for rebels, who have recently switched to suicide bomb attacks carried out by women fighters.
Earlier this month, a female bomber blew up a bus carrying workers from a Russian air base near Chechnya, killing herself and at least 14 people. Two other suicide bombings in three days in Chechnya last month killed at least 78 people.
Meanwhile on Friday, at the trial of a Chechen man accused of helping the hostage-takers in the 2002 Moscow theater siege, a prosecutor in the Russian capital warned of fresh attacks. (Chechen jailed)
Moscow's chief prosecutor Mikhail Avdyukov said Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who was behind the theater raid, had also ordered a series of bombings in Moscow and, possibly, the seizure of the lower house of Russian parliament, the State Duma.
