11 Killed By Blast Near Russian Bus

Officials Say Explosion Likely Caused By Bomb In North Ossetia, Which Borders Chechnya

(CBS/AP)  An explosion hit a minibus unloading passengers in the capital of Russia's North Ossetia province on Thursday, killing 11 people, federal investigators said.

A duty officer at the Emergency Ministry in North Ossetia, who was not authorized to give his name, said the blast was caused by an improvised roadside bomb.

CBS News Moscow bureau chief Svetlana Berdnikova said local television reports from the city of Vladikavkaz were describing the scene as a bomb explosion.

She said another theory being investigated was that a suicide bomber may have been involved, due to the many body parts seen strewn about the site.

Twenty-eight people, including at least one child, were treated for injuries, said Berdnikova.

"Bomb fragments were found at the scene. It was a terrorist act," a source at North Ossetia's Prosecutor General's office told Russia's Interfax news agency.

Passengers were getting off the bus near the entrance to the central market in Vladikavkaz, Russia's Investigative Committee said on its Web site.

The committee said it had opened an investigation into what may have been a terrorist attack. It said 11 people were killed.

North Ossetia borders war-scarred Chechnya as well as Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region, the focus of a war in August between Russia and Georgia.

It has been the site of several bomb blasts since the start of Russia's wars against Chechen separatists over a decade ago.