A car bomb attack on a military camp killed at least three and injured more than 30 servicemen in southern Russia on Sunday.
A suicide bomber after midnight rammed a car packed with 50 kg of explosives into a truck that blocked the way inside a field camp set up by a motorised infantry brigade at a firing range near the town of Buinaksk in Dagestan.
If the bomber had reached tents where hundreds of soldiers were sleeping there would have been many more casualties, according to a Defence Ministry spokesman. He said the guards had opened fire on the bombers' car and planted a truck in their way.
Five out of the 34 servicemen injured in the attack were in grave condition, the spokesman said.
Later, a roadside bomb exploded nearby as police drove to probe the attack. Nobody was hurt.
A day earlier a car bomb in the capital of Dagestan, Makhachkala, wounded a Minister in the local government and killed his driver.
The North Caucasus republic of Dagestan has overtaken neighbouring Chechnya as Russia's most violent region hit by Islamist militancy.
