Suicide truck bombing leaves at least 27 dead, levels military

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia -- A suicide bomber rammed a truck packed with explosives Friday into a military hospital near Chechnya caring for dozens of Russian troops. Officials said at least 27 people were killed with 15 others feared trapped in the rubble.

The four-story red brick hospital in the city of Mozdok was destroyed in the explosion, the latest in an upsurge of suicide bombings that have killed more than 100 people since May.

Russian authorities suspected Chechnya's separatist rebels in the attack in the city of Mozdok in Russia's North Ossetia region.

There were conflicting reports on the death count. Regional Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said at least 27 people were killed and 15 others feared trapped in the ruins. Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said 35 were killed. Another official put the toll at 33.

Dzgoyev said 76 people were injured, many of them soldiers who had been in the hospital recovering from wounds suffered in Chechnya, where Russia's second war against rebels in a decade has lasted nearly four years.

At the moment of the explosion, there were 98 patients and 21 employees inside the building, which collapsed like a house of cards, said Dzgoyev.

Maj. Gen. Nikolai Lityuk, deputy chief of the emergency ministry's southern Russia branch, said a Kamaz truck broke through the hospital gates, drove past some tents, pulled up at the reception office and exploded, leaving a crater 26 feet across and 10 feet deep.

One wall left standing

"We were the first to arrive. Near the checkpoint of the hospital there were charred corpses," a medical assistant from Mozdok's central hospital, Galina, said on Rossiya television.

"Tents that were put up near the main building were all gone, there was one wall left from the main building."

The force of the explosion was equivalent to at least a ton of TNT, Interfax quoted Fridinsky as saying.

"The United States condemns this act of terrorism," White House spokes-man Scott McClellan said. "No cause whatsoever, be it national, ethnic, religious, or political, can justify terrorism."

A woman who lives 2 1/2 miles from the hospital said windows broke and plaster fell from walls in her neighborhood.

"I saw a big column of smoke," said the woman, identified as Valentina, speaking on Ekho Moskvy radio.

Mozdok is the headquarters for Russian forces fighting in Chechnya and has been repeatedly targeted by attackers.

A fire broke out after the blast but was put out in about two hours. Emergency workers later picked through the rubble with heavy machinery and sniffer dogs, and a plane with rescuers and medical equipment was dispatched from Moscow, officials said.

A duty officer at the regional Emergency Situations Ministry in North Ossetia said 35 of the wounded were taken to Mozdok's central hospital and four others died on the way.

Alina Totykova, deputy head of the North Ossetian hospital in the regional capital, Vladikavkaz, said all available ambulances were sent to Mozdok. There was a shortage of medicine, anesthetics and bandages and a severe shortage of blood, she said, adding that an appeal for people to give blood would be broadcast on television in the region.

President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to relatives of the victims and urged the North Ossetian leadership to tell federal authorities in Moscow what was needed to aid the victims, the Kremlin said. Putin also ordered law enforcement officials to investigate.

Chechnya has been wracked by violence since Russian forces entered the mostly Muslim region in 1994 in a bid to crush separatist rebels. Russian troops withdrew in 1996, leaving the separatists in charge, but returned in 1999 after Chechnya-based militants invaded a neighboring region. The Kremlin also blamed rebels for apartment-building bombings that killed 300 people in 1999.

Last month, Putin signed an order setting presidential elections in Chechnya for Oct. 5 -- the latest step in his strategy of trying to bring a political resolution in the Caucasus republic even as fighting continues.

However, rebel attacks -- which have increasingly involved suicide bombings targeting civilians -- have undercut the Kremlin's effort to portray the situation in the war-shattered region as stabilizing.

In June, a female suicide attacker detonated a bomb near a bus carrying soldiers and civilians to work at a military airfield near Mozdok, killing at least 16 people.

In May, in Chechnya, a suicide truck-bombing killed 72 people and a woman blew herself up at a religious ceremony, killing at least 18 people.

A double suicide-bombing at a rock concert in Moscow on July 5 killed the female attackers and 15 other people.

In Chechnya on Friday, fighting raged for hours in the town of Argun and 19 Russian servicemen and Chechen police were killed in the region in the past 24 hours, an official in the Moscow-backed administration said.