Death toll in Chechnya could be 50
At least 30 people have now been confirmed killed today in a suicide truck bombing at a government compound in northern Chechnya - and some estimates say 50 people may have been killed.
Officials said the bomb-laden vehicle blew up and badly damaged several buildings in Znamenskoye, Nadterechny district.
District head Sultan Ahmetkhanov said at least 30 people were killed and two to three times that number were wounded.
The blast hit the local administration headquarters, a Federal Security Service office, a police station and eight homes.
Akhmetkhanov said it left a crater 50ft wide and six feet deep.
One official at Chechnya’s justice ministry said at least 50 people were killed.
He said the blast completely destroyed the two storey offices of the Federal Security Service, the intelligence agency that leads Russia’s campaign in Chechnya.
The district police headquarters and the local administration building were also in ruins, he said
In December, a truck bomb attack at the headquarters of the Moscow-backed administration in the capital Grozny killed at least 70 people.
The head of Chechnya’s Security Council, Rudnik Dudayev, said today’s blast happened at about 10am (7am Irish time).
Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky was heading to the scene.
Northern Chechnya is considered the safest part of the region and was the first area to come under the control of Russian forces that entered the republic in 1999, starting the region’s second war in a decade.
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