CHECHNYA: A bomb-laden truck destroyed a military hospital near Chechnya yesterday, killing at least 35 people and wounding 35 in the latest attack to shake the Kremlin's controversial peace plan for the restive Russian republic. Daniel McLaughlin reports.
The dead were believed to be federal troops recovering from injuries inflicted by Chechnya's daily rebel bomb and gun attacks, and the medical staff treating them in the relative safety of Mozdok, the capital of the North Ossetia region that borders Chechnya.
Some witnesses told Russian television that a Kamaz truck, with one person behind the wheel, burst through the gates of the four-storey hospital and tore into the building at high speed. Local officials said a parked van or truck may have exploded.
"There was a huge blast, and the hospital was totally destroyed," a Mozdok resident said. "There were people everywhere - injured people and doctors - trying to pull people out of the rubble."
An Emergencies Ministry official said there were 135 injured soldiers in the hospital when the bomber struck. He said the building was flattened and engulfed in flames, with many patients and medical staff believed buried in the wreckage.
The attack is the latest suicide bombing to undermine Kremlin claims to have all but pacified Chechnya after fighting two wars with guerrillas since 1994.
President Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB spy who came to power vowing to crush Chechnya's separatists, has staked much political capital in subduing the region.
Mr Putin ordered Russia's Emergencies Ministry to send a plane full of supplies down to North Ossetia yesterday.
Kremlin officials fear a wave of Chechen attacks ahead of national parliamentary elections in December, and a presidential vote next March.
"The terrorists will not destabilise Chechnya or Russia, and they will not succeed in sowing panic among the nation," Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, Mr Putin's special human rights representative for Chechnya, said yesterday.
The republic's guerrillas have intensified attacks since denouncing a March referendum that Moscow said proved Chechens' desire to remain part of the Russian Federation.
Two women blew up themselves and 13 other people outside a rock concert in Moscow last month.
In June, a woman blew up a bus carrying Russian air force staff in North Ossetia, killing 17 people. It came less than a month after rebels drove a bomb-laden truck into a government complex in Chechnya itself, killing 59 people.
Just two days later a woman blew herself up at a festival in the republic, killing at least 16 people in a suspected assassination attempt on the region's Kremlin-backed leader, Akhmad Kadyrov.
Russian officials say the rise of suicide bombings proves the growing influence of Islamic fundamentalism. Many Chechens say the phenomenon simply highlights the desperation of civilians who accuse Russian troops of persistent kidnap, torture and murder.