World News Chechnya hit by two suicide bombings

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A suicide bomber posing as a journalist blew herself up and killed about 14 people at a Muslim religious ceremony in Chechnya on May 14, authorities said.

It was the second major terrorist bombing in Chechnya in one week, after a suicide truck-bomb attack on a government compound in Znamenskoye left 59 dead and almost 200 wounded May 12.

The second attack, blamed on separatist rebels, was an apparent assassination attempt against the head of the Moscow-backed Chechen government, Akhmad Kadyrov, who was not injured. Four of his bodyguards were reported among the dead.

The bomb went off near the podium where Kadyrov had been addressing a crowd of 15,000.

Sources say that the bomber wore a special belt containing the equivalent of about 450 grams of TNT, although authorities also say it could have been hidden in her video camera.

The attack came as U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

Powell arrived from Saudi Arabia, where at least 34 people were killed and nearly 200 injured on May 12 in a car-bomb attack in the capital Riyadh. The attack, which targeted three compounds housing Americans and other foreigners, was blamed on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

チェチェン共和国で自爆テロ

ロシア南部チェチェン共和国で14日、自爆テロが起き、14人が死亡した。

Shukan ST: May 23, 2003

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