Posted on 08/02/2003 9:37:15 AM PDT by facedown
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia - Rescuers on Saturday picked through the rubble of a military hospital destroyed by a suicide attack the day before, while the death toll rose to 42 and Russian officials said they suspected Chechen rebels were behind the explosion.
An unidentified attacker rammed a truck packed with explosives through the gates of the four-story red brick hospital Friday night in the city of Mozdok in the North Ossetia region, the region's Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said. He said 98 patients and 21 employees were inside the building at the time of the explosion.
About 700 rescue workers used sniffer dogs and heavy machinery to search for more victims and clear the blast site. Officials said they expected the death toll to rise as the rubble is cleared.
"The search continues for the dead and the wounded who could be remaining under the debris," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said as he surveyed the debris.
Ivanov broke off his summer vacation to travel to the site Saturday at the request of President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites). He said the act of terrorism was possible because special military security orders were disobeyed. He said the chief of the Mozdok military garrison had been suspended pending an investigation.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but Russian officials said they suspected Chechen rebels were behind it. Suicide bombings have killed more than 100 people in and near Chechnya (news - web sites) and in Moscow since May.
Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said that because military personnel who fought rebels in Chechnya were being treated at the hospital, "we are inclined to view this crime as an act of revenge."
"We can definitely say that it is not a question of a criminal dispute, but a well-planned terrorist act," he said on NTV.
Dzgoyev said many of the patients had been soldiers who recovering from wounds suffered in Chechnya, where Russia's second war against rebels in a decade has lasted nearly four years.
Robert Kireyev, a spokesman for the Emergency Situation Ministry in southern Russia, said 42 people had been confirmed killed by Saturday evening and 36 bodies had been identified. He said 74 people remained hospitalized, 10 in critical condition.
Soldiers in the region donated blood for the wounded Saturday after hospital officials warned of serious shortages of medicine and supplies.
Maj. Gen. Nikolai Lityuk, deputy head of the regional Emergency Situations Ministry, said after the blast that 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.
Lityuk said preliminary information indicated one person was in the truck during the attack, the latest deadly assault aimed at the Russian military in and around Chechnya and another bloody blow to the Kremlin's efforts to bring order in the region.
Mozdok is the headquarters for Russian forces fighting in Chechnya and has been targeted by attackers before. 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.
Putin expressed condolences to relatives of the victims, ordered an investigation and met with security officials to discuss the attack, the Kremlin said.
Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya following a 1994-1996 war that left separatists in charge, but returned in 1999 after Chechnya-based militants invaded a neighboring region and after the Kremlin also blamed rebels for apartment-building bombings that killed about 300 people.
In May in Chechnya, a truck-bomb attack similar to Friday's blast killed 60 people and a woman blew herself up at a religious ceremony, killing at least 18. Last month, a double suicide bombing at a rock concert in Moscow killed 15 bystanders.
Same MO.
Most definitely.
Thoughts and prayers to the families of the dead.
Looks like the chechens are upset about elections Russia has scheduled for them in early October.
?
In the eastern administrative division of Moscow in the territory of wholesale market "seagull" was discovered a hiding-place with weapons and explosives.
FSB and police were searching there after a tip.
In one of the containers they found a home-made explosive device, whose power was equivalent to 400 grams of "trotyl". Also found were 20 pistols and a large quantity of ammunition."
I never can translate this "trotyl" thing...
That's TNT.
IN the context of this story, I'm not sure what that means.
Normally these people have mouths that never quit when it comes to analyzing these things after the fact.
I think it is making me nervous that they are so quiet.
trinitrotoluene - VERY explosive.
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