http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=russia
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=bus
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Thanks to RDTF for the ping to this thread.
Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929473/posts
5 Die As Bus Explodes in Russia (near Beslan)
Breitbart ^ | Nov 22, 2007 | SERGEI VENYAVSKY, AP
Posted on 11/22/2007 7:58:56 PM PST by RDTF
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) - A passenger bus caught fire and exploded in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus Thursday, killing at least five people and wounding 12, emergency and police officials said.
Investigators said they considered terrorism the likely cause. The incident took place in the North Ossetia region which is plagued by violence from feuding criminal groups, remnants of Chechen separatist fighters and other militant groups that target government and police. But authorities did not point to any specific group that is suspected.
The bus traveling from the southern city of Pyatigorsk was near a police post on the administrative border of North Ossetia when the fire broke out, said Oleg Ugnivnenko, a spokesman for the regional Emergency Situation Ministry. The explosion happened shortly after.
The RIA-Novosti news agency, citing an unnamed law enforcement official, said the blast may have been caused by an explosive device in the road.
However, a duty officer for the North Ossetia Interior Ministry told The Associated Press that the device had been planted on the bus, possibly while it was parked near a police post awaiting a sweep by officers. The officer asked not to be named since he was not authorized to speak to the media.
One child was among the five killed and 12 people were hospitalized with burns and shrapnel wounds. A total of 19 people, including two drivers, were on the bus.
North Ossetia is next to violence-wracked Chechnya. Beslan, in North Ossetia, was the site of a 2004 school hostage seizure that resulted in the deaths of more than 330 people.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929473/posts
OTTAWA -- A record number of low-level radioactive materials, the kind terrorists could fashion into dirty bombs, have gone missing in Canada this year, raising concerns about the effectiveness of federal controls over nuclear materials.
News of the jump in thefts and lost material coincides with an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Europe at which nuclear counter-terrorism specialists were told this week of an almost fourfold increase in nuclear smuggling since 2006, a further indication al-Qaeda-inspired radicals may be trying to obtain radioactive material for a bomb.
Highly enriched uranium and plutonium, the essential ingredients for a nuclear bomb, remain obvious concerns. But officials are also worried about nuclear material in millions of radioactive sources, typically in measuring and analytical equipment used in medicine, industry, agriculture and research, that could be extracted and spewed into the air using conventional high explosives. The primary intent would be to panic a population rather than inflict mass causalities.
As of Wednesday, 26 radioactive sources have been reported lost and stolen so far this year in Canada, compared to 15 last year and a dozen in 2005 and previous recent years, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the federal nuclear regulator. Fourteen devices this year remain missing, twice as many as last year when six were not recovered and almost three times the five still missing from 20
Excerpted
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=7b29113c-86ab-4a83-9638-808af19d0584&k=84784
ADDING to post no. 1057:
UPDATE:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7108196.stm
Last Updated: Thursday, 22 November 2007, 22:37 GMT
“Explosion rips through Russia bus”
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “An explosion aboard a bus in Russia’s North Ossetia region has killed at least five people, including a nine-year-old girl, and hurt 12.
The bus was travelling from the city of Pyatigorsk and had stopped on the border with the Kabardino-Balkaria region when the explosion took place.
“It was an attack,” a police official told AFP news agency.
Unrest linked to militants and criminal gangs is common in Russia’s Caucacus republics bordering restive Chechnya.
The blast was caused by a device containing over 300g of explosives and loaded with nails and scraps of metal, police sources told the Reuters news agency.
As many as 19 people were on the bus, including two drivers, when the explosion took place.
Russian prosecutors have begun investigating the blast as a terrorist attack, according to the Interfax news agency.”