Suicide bomber kill himself and injured one person in southern Russia

A man strapped with explosives blew himself up Thursday near a mosque in the regional capital of the restive southern Russian province of Dagestan, killing himself and injuring another person, police said. A spokesman for the local branch of the Interior Ministry, Abdul Musayev, said that the man who was killed had a belt of explosives and probably detonated it by accident.

The RIA-Novosti news agency quoted witnesses as saying that the man appeared to be on his way to a nearby house in Makhachkala, where a ceremony of mourning was being held for the son of a top police official shot dead late Tuesday. "It's not certain but he probably was heading there," Musayev said.

In Tuesday's attack, the latest of many targeting law enforcement officials in the violence-plagued region next to Chechnya, gunmen opened fire on a car used by Deputy Interior Minister Magomed Gazimagomedov. He was not in the car, but his son, who was a security officer, and a bodyguard were killed.

The same day, a shootout erupted between a group of police officers and alleged rebels they were trying to apprehend elsewhere in Dagestan. A policeman and a suspected militant were killed, reports Interfax. I.L.