Two killed, three wounded in blast targeting police car in southern Russia

A policeman and a passenger in a passing minivan were killed in the latest explosion to have targeted a police car in Makhachkala, the capital of the restive southern province of Dagestan, the regional Interior Department said Wednesday.

Officials initially had said that one police officer was killed and two passers-by were wounded in the Tuesday night blast, which destroyed a police car. The Interior Department said Wednesday that three passengers including a teenage girl in the minivan were badly wounded.

The explosion could be heard in the center of Makhachkala, the regional capital. Dagestan borders Chechnya and is plagued by violence, some of it linked to the war between Russian forces and Chechen rebels and some linked to local criminal activity.

Dagestan, an ethnically mixed, mostly Muslim region on the Caspian Sea, has been rocked for months by bombings and other attacks on police and other law enforcement authorities. A suspect detained in a clash earlier this year was carrying a detailed hitlist of high-ranking police officers in the region, authorities said.

AP

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