At least five people were killed and 20 injured today when a bomb exploded outside a theatre in the southern Russian city of Stavropol just before the start of a Chechen dance show, investigators said.
Investigators opened a criminal case under terrorism laws, the Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement.
The ethnically Russian Stavropol region, which borders the violence-racked Muslim republics of the North Caucasus, has been hit by Islamist attacks in the past, but not in recent years.
Islamist rebels have vowed in recent months to expand their campaign of shootings and bombings to Russian cities. Suicide bombers on the Moscow metro in March killed 40 in the worst attack on the Russian heartland since 2004.
The prosecutor's office statement said the bomb, which contained explosives equivalent to 200-250 grammes of TNT, exploded 15 minutes before the start of a concert by a celebrated Vainakh dance troop from Chechnya.
The dance troop is closely associated with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has posed for photographs with the dancers.
"About 15-20 minutes before the start of the concert we heard an explosion. We saw the blast had practically flung aside the crowd that had gathered outside...about 100-150 people," Rustam, an eyewitness, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Two bodies covered in white sheets lay near the exit of the Stavropol Concert Hall, which was sealed off by police. RIA news agency quoted local hospitals as saying at least 40 were injured in the blast.
Reuters