Two powerful explosions went off near a traffic police post in the capital of Russia’s restive Dagestan region.
At least 12 people were killed and over 100 wounded in a double car bombing in Russia's North Caucasus, the deadliest militant strike for months in the troubled region, officials said on Friday.
The massive blasts outside the main city of Dagestan sent huge yellow flames into the night sky, reduced cars to burned wreckage and ripped a crater into the ground, television pictures showed.
Investigators said the first blast went off on the outskirts of the city of Makhachkala in the republic of Dagestan when a Lada car laden with explosives was detonated near a traffic police post damaging nearby buildings and cars but causing no fatalities.
The second car bomb went off fifteen minutes later hitting policemen, rescue workers and passers-by who gathered at the scene, investigators said.
The twin attacks appeared to bear the hallmarks of bombings conducted by radical militants fighting the Kremlin in the Caucasus where they seek to establish an Islamist state.
The blasts were by far the deadliest attacks in the Caucasus this year and deal a huge blow to Kremlin hopes of restoring relative stability to a region that has been a headache for Moscow since the collapse of the former USSR.
