MOSCOW (AP) - A truck bomb exploded Friday near a government compound in the Chechen
capital, Grozny, wounding at least 36 people, a Chechen official said.
The blast went off about 70 yards from a building that houses the police department
for fighting organized crime in Chechnya, said Akhmed Dzheirkhanov, deputy chief
of the Emergency Situations Ministry branch for the republic.
Chechen Prime Minister Anatoly Popov initially said a woman was killed in the
explosion but later said there were no deaths and several injuries. Dzeirkhanov
said 36 people were hurt, four of them hospitalized.
A Chechen Justice Ministry official, Vadish Tepkayev, said the blast killed eight
people. There was no way to reconcile the conflicting casualty counts.
Dzheirkhanov had also said earlier that another blast occurred nearby but later
said there was just one explosion.
The explosion carved out a crater several feet wide, Dzheirkhanov said. Another
Chechen emergency ministry official, Ruslan Khadzhiyev, said the truck was carrying
the equivalent of 1.6 tons of TNT.
TVS television showed footage of a man, cradling an injured arm, running for help
on a street strewn with metal fragments reportedly from a large Kamaz truck. Police
and troops came streaming into the street, moving quickly toward the smoke-covered
scene of the blast.
The explosions came the day before the Chechen State Council, the republic's temporary
legislature, was to have met for its first session in a Grozny building hastily
built to replace the government headquarters destroyed in a December car bombing.
That attack killed at least 70 people.
(snip)
Chechenpress
New details of the explosion in Grozny
The explosion, which took place on the street which, by irony of fate, is called
"Tikhaya" ("Quiet"), destroyed the building of the Ministry of Justice of the
occupation administration of the RF in Chechnya. It was reported that the explosion
formed a crater four-five metres deep and with a diameter of four metres.
According to preliminary data, 18 members of the RF power structures were injued
by the mine explosion.
"The number of victims will most likely be considerably higher", stated the so-called
"procurator" of Chechnya, Kravchenko.
It was reported that a "Kamaz" vehicle, loaded with a large quantity of explosives,
was blown up.
Pieces of metal from the exploded vehicle were scattered over a radius of more
than 300 metres, in the courts of the administrative buildings and on the Staropomyslovsky
highway. The glass was broken in the windows of buildings in a large radius around
the point of impact.
The explosive device had been placed in a truck that was located on the curb of
the Staropomyslovsky highway. A number of buildings of the RF Ministry of Finance
and the Ministry of Economy were also damaged by the blast.
Russian investigators so far haven't determined if there were people in the truck,
or if it was blown up from a distance, by remote control. Later, reports began
to arrive that the vehicle had been driven by suicide bombers, a man and a woman.
Besides this, the investigators can't explain either how the "Kamaz" with explosives
could be taken into one of the most guarded zones of Grozny. The explosion took
place 50 metres from the turn to the complex of so-called "government buildings",
near the building of the 6th division of the RUBOP, where the Chechen members
of the infamous "death squads" work.
At this point, the official leadership of the ChRI and the command of the Resistance
forces haven't commented on this mine explosion in any way.
The Russian side, of course, due to tradition, immediately called today's mine
explosion in Grozny an "act of terrorism". However, the RF Ministry of Justice
is - as you know - one of the primary structures in the system of the Russian
occupation formations. Therefore, according to all classical laws of war, the
destruction of members of this occupation department was a legitimate sabotage
action.
Chechenpress , 20.06.03
http://www.chechenpress.com/news/06_2003/12_20_06.shtml
[Translation by N.S.]