Bomb blamed on Muslim militants kills three in Russia

MOSCOW -- A powerful shrapnel-filled bomb exploded Thursday near a police station in Russia's troubled Dagestan region, killing three people and injuring 18 others, officials said.

The bomb, attached to a parked motorcycle or scooter in the city of Khasavyurt exploded at about 10 a.m., the regional Interior Ministry said.

The blast killed one police officer, a pregnant woman and a 5-year-old girl, the ministry said.

The officer, the head of a branch of the city police that provides security to private companies and state-run enterprises, was killed in his office, about 50 feet from the bomb.

Authorities earlier said that a second officer, a member of a squad that fights organized crime, also died, but later said that information was wrong.

The ministry said 18 people were hospitalized, three in critical condition.

A spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry in southern Russia, Andrei Somishchenko, meanwhile, said 12 people were in the hospital, including three in critical condition. He said a total of 35 people were hurt in the explosion.

The bomb was filled with nuts, bolts and ball bearings, the ministry said.

Television footage showed a street that looked like a firestorm passed through, with gutted cars and heavily damaged buildings.

Dagestan, a mostly Muslim region in southern Russia, is plagued by violence -- at least some of which is related to the separatist fighting in neighboring Chechnya.

Dagestan's Interior Minister Adilgirei Magomed-Tagirov said he believed the attack was carried out by militant Wahhabi sect Muslims active in Chechnya and Dagestan.