Toll rises, region mourns after Russia suicide blast

MOSCOW: The death toll from a suicide bomb in Russia's restive North Caucasus rose to 18 on Friday as the stricken province observed a day of mourning and doctors fought for the lives of several critically wounded victims.

An injured victim of Thursday's attack at the gates of a busy market in the capital of North Ossetia province died in hospital overnight, an official at the regional Health Ministry said by phone.

That brought the death toll to 18, including the suspected attacker, the official said. More than 100 people remained hospitalised, including 11 who were flown to Moscow. Five of those were in critical condition, Andrei Solnikov, the head of an Emergencies Ministry medical unit, said on state-run Rossiya-24 television.

Authorities said the attacker detonated a powerful bomb packed with bolts and other projectiles in a car outside the entrance to the central market in the North Ossetian capital, Vladikavkaz.

The blast was a new blow to the Kremlin, which is struggling to contain a growing insurgency in the North Caucasus, a strip of impoverished, ethnically mixed provinces along Russia's southern border.

Mostly Orthodox Christian North Ossetia is sandwiched among the predominantly Muslim regions of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria, which are plagued by daily violence linked to the insurgency.

Militants, whose campaign against Russian authorities stems from the devastating post-Soviet wars between federal forces and Chechen separatists, have struck outside those regions several times.

They claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings that killed 40 people on Moscow's metro in March, and have vowed further attacks.

North Ossetia is the site of the 2004 Beslan school siege that led to more than 330 deaths.

Militant attacks have persisted despite the killings of some of the top insurgent leaders since federal forces drove separatists from power in Chechnya about a decade ago.

Rights groups say the poverty, corruption and abusive conduct by government forces stokes anger at the authorities and fuels the insurgency.