Five dead after car explodes near Russian market

A car exploded near the central market of a major city in Russia's restive North Caucasus region today, killing at least five people and wounding 20, officials said.

There was no immediate information on whether the car that exploded in Vladikavkaz had been rigged with explosives or if the blast was due to other causes. The market and its surrounding blocks has been the target of several bomb attacks over the past dozen years, in which scores of people have died.

Vladikavkaz is the capital of the Russian republic of North Ossetia. Although it is less plagued by violence than some other republics in the region such as Chechnya and Dagestan, North Ossetia suffers ethnic tensions.

It also was the scene of the 2004 Beslan crisis, in which Chechen terrorists took hundreds of hostages at a school — a siege that ended in a bloodbath killing more than 330 people, about half of them children.

Today's explosion took place on a lane near the market around noon, said Oleg Rudenkov of the North Ossetian Emergencies Ministry. Republican Interior Ministry spokesman Nikolai Morozov said five people died and at least 20 were wounded.

The Vladikavkaz market was bombed in 1999, killing 55. Another bombing in 2001 killed six people. In 2004, 11 people died when a minibus stopped near the market was bombed.

In Dagestan, officials said that a hotel employee and another civilian were shot to death by men trying to build a bomb in their hotel room.

Republican Interior Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said the shooting took place last night in the capital Makhachkala. He said three armed men fled a room in the small hotel after an explosion and opened fire on a hotel clerk and another person who confronted them. He says police found several bombs and six grenades in the room.

In the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt, on the border with Chechnya, a policeman returning home from work was shot to death, Gasanov said.

Dagestan is plagued by near-daily shootings and explosions blamed on criminal gangs and on militants inspired by the insurgency in neighboring Chechnya.