Car Bomb Rocks Russian City

A car bomb exploded in southern Russia near Chechnya early Monday, injuring a local government official and his driver, just hours after voting ended in Russia's presidential election, police said.

The bomb ripped through an armored jeep outside the Kavkaz hotel in the city of Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan, according to a duty officer at the city police department.

Vice premier of the Dagestan government, Ilyas Umakhanov, and his driver were injured in the blast, a spokesman for the Dagestan Federal Security Service said. It was not immediately clear whether the two had been inside the jeep during the explosion.

It was unclear whether the explosion was connected to the election. Police had been on alert around the country to prevent Chechen terror attacks.

A wave of apartment bombings last fall in Dagestan and Moscow killed about 300 people. The Russian government blamed the bombings on Chechen militants, and cited the blasts as a reason for sending troops into Chechnya, where fighting between federal forces and Islamic militants has been raging for six months.

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