Death Toll Rises In Russia Bomb Blast
Flags flew at half-staff and all entertainment TV programming was canceled Friday in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, where the death toll in a holiday bombing rose to 41.
The regional legislature declared a day of mourning for the victims of the bomb, which exploded in the Caspian Sea port of Kaspiisk along the route of a parade. The victims were celebrating the Victory Day holiday commemorating the allied triumph over Nazi Germany — the Russian army's most important celebration.
At the site of the blast, mourners placed flowers along the roadside and lit dozens of candles in memory of the victims.
At least five people injured in the blast, including three servicemen, died in the hospital overnight. In all, 21 servicemen were killed, most of them musicians marching in the parade, a spokesman for the regional Interior Ministry said.
The dead also included at least 13 children.
The remote-controlled bomb was an anti-personnel mine packed with metal fragments, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Friday, quoting explosives experts. It ripped through the crowd as the parade marched toward the city's cemetery, leaving mangled bodies and musical instruments scattered on the bloodied street.
No one claimed responsibility for the blast, but regional prosecutors said Islamic militants who have organized previous attacks in the restive region were probably to blame.
A 1996 blast in a Kaspiisk apartment building housing Russian border guards and their families killed 68 people. Officials never determined who was responsible.
Thursday's explosion was the latest in a series of terrorist and criminal attacks in Dagestan, but its timing on Victory Day caused shock and anger across the nation.
President Vladimir Putin met in the Kremlin Friday with the prime minister, defense minister, foreign minister and the interior minister to discuss assistance to survivors.
On Thursday Putin called the attack a terrorist act and appointed Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, to oversee the investigation.
"We have the right to view (the perpetrators) as we view Nazis, as those whose purpose is to sow terror and kill," Putin said.
Dagestan borders the breakaway republic of Chechnya, where rebels fired on a stadium in the capital Grozny on Thursday as Russian forces and Chechen civilians gathered for Victory Day celebrations. Four police officers were wounded, according to an official in Chechnya's Moscow-backed administration.
Prosecutors said they believed the Kaspiisk bombing was staged by militant followers of the strict Wahhabi branch of Islam — not necessarily Chechen rebels. Dagestan, a patchwork of mostly Muslim ethnic minorities, is the site of fairly frequent small-scale bombings and other unrest, often spillover violence from Chechnya.
Chechnya won de facto independence after a 1994-96 war between separatists and Russian troops. Russian forces returned in 1999 after Chechnya-based rebels invaded Dagestan and a series of apartment house bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities killed about 300 people. Russian authorities blamed the bombings on the rebels.