Rescue workers pick through Chechen blast site
Rescue crews in the Chechen capital were today picking through the rubble of a police station that was destroyed by an explosion last night.
Officials in Grozny said at least 22 people were killed by the blast, which almost flattened the building.
Two policemen were pulled out alive early today and the rescue mission would continue, said Ruslan Avtayev, Chechnya’s emergency situations minister.
At least 18 people were injured. Avtayev said he expected rescue crews to find up to seven more bodies in the rubble.
He said the explosion, which occurred on the second floor of the four-storey building, was aimed at top Chechen police officials who were holding a meeting on the third floor last night.
Investigators at the scene found fragments of an explosive device in the rubble, the Interfax news agency quoted Chechnya’s prosecutor Nikolai Kostyuchenko as saying.
The Russian military and the Moscow-backed administration in Grozny are eager to show that life is returning to normal in the Chechen capital, but after three years Chechnya is still mired in the second war in a decade and the ravaged capital is plagued by tension and violence.
Chechen rebels kill Russian soldiers and Chechen police daily with guerilla attacks and mine explosions. Most of the police serving the southern republic’s Moscow-backed government are ethnic Chechens – whom the rebels consider traitors.
Russian forces left Chechnya in 1996 after a disastrous two-year war but returned in 1999 after rebels raided a neighbouring region and after Russian authorities blamed the rebels for a series of apartment bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people.
