Simmering insurgency: Suicide attack targets police station in south Russia

MOSCOW: Three suicide bombers blew themselves up on Monday as they tried to storm a rural police station in a usually peaceful region of southern Russia, causing no other casualties, police said.

After the attack in the village of Novoselitskoye in the southern Stavropol region, regional authorities ordered the tightening of security measures at kindergartens, schools and hospitals.

Russia's North Caucasus -- including Chechnya, where the Kremlin has fought two wars against separatists over the past 20 years -- has been gripped by nearly daily violence for years due to a simmering insurgency there.



But attacks in the Stavropol region — close to the Muslim-majority North Caucasus — are rare.

"We were holding a meeting in the morning when five explosions went off," Sergei Karamyshev, a senior local police official, told AFP.

"Three people blew themselves up after an officer on duty at the entrance blocked the door to the building."

He said three of the explosions were caused by the suicide bombers, while a fourth was caused by a grenade. The source of the fifth blast was not immediately clear, he added.

"There are only fragments of flesh over there," said Karamyshev.

A regional police spokeswoman said however that only one of the attackers had detonated his explosive charge, while the other two assailants were killed by "return fire."

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th,  2016.