Fourteen killed in new Chechnya suicide bombing

A woman suicide bomber blew herself up at a crowded Muslim festival in Russia's rebel Chechnya yesterday in the second such attack this week, killing at least 14 people and wounding scores of others.

The latest suicide bombing by Chechen independence rebels, apparently an attempt to assassinate the region's most senior pro-Moscow figure, followed a truck bomb at government offices in the north of the territory on Monday which killed 59.

Chechen Emergencies Minister Ruslan Avtayev, denying earlier reports of 30 killed, said the death toll stood at 14 - seven killed on the spot in the blast and seven dying later in hospital.

A total of 145 people were wounded, of whom 45 were in a serious condition, the regional emergencies ministry said.

The attack dealt a further setback to President Vladimir Putin's plans to end 10 years of separatist conflict in Chechnya as he prepared to sit down with visiting US Secretary of State Colin Powell for talks on fighting terrorism and other issues.

Greeting Powell, who arrived from Riyadh where suicide bombers killed 34 people on Monday, President Putin said grimly:

"We have again been confronted with manifestations of terrorism: the terrorist act in Saudi Arabia and two terrorist acts in Chechnya. The latest took place today."

The woman staged her mid-afternoon attack at a festival near the town of Iliskhan-Yurt, east of the regional capital Grozny, marking the birthday of the prophet Mohammad.

Officials said she had intended to kill Akhmad Kadyrov, the pro-Moscow head of the Chechen administration and a strong advocate of President Putin's peace plan, who addressed the crowd of about 15,000.

"Kadyrov was speaking into the microphone from a stage, calling people to pray for peace. The woman approached him and his bodyguards rushed towards her. She then detonated the bomb," said Edi Isayev, Kadyrov's spokesman in Moscow.

"This was without doubt an attempt to assassinate Kadyrov and all the religious figures who support President Putin's peace plan," Isayev told Reuters.

Kadyrov escaped unhurt. But Itar-Tass news agency said four of his bodyguards were among those killed by the bomb.

Many of those killed were elderly. Local officials identified the bomber as 46-year old Shakhida Baimuratova, a rebel fighter whose husband was killed in 1999 during the conflict. "Only her head remained after the explosion," said Kadyrov's press service.

A police official, quoted by Interfax news agency, said Baimuratova belonged to a group of independence fighters loyal to rebel warlord Shamil Basayev, Russia's most wanted man.

On Monday three suicide bombers drove a truck loaded with explosives into a government office complex in Znamenskoye, a relatively peaceful part of the region in the north.

A senior justice official in Chechnya said Russian authorities were studying the possibility that the rebels, frustrated by the tight grip of the Russian military in the region, had now switched to a campaign of suicide bombings.

The two attacks took place just seven weeks after a Kremlin-organised constitutional referendum that anchored the rebellious Muslim region firmly in Russia.

After Monday's bomb, President Putin vowed to stick to the Kremlin's blueprint, next stage of which is the holding of presidential elections for the region in December.