Suicide truck bomb kills at least 20 in Russia

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-17 19:47

Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (L) visits Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov on Yevkurov's birthday, in a hospital in Moscow July 30, 2009. Yevkurov is in hospital after surviving an assassination attempt in June. [Agencies]

Ingushetia's Kremlin-appointed president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was badly wounded in a suicide bombing in June and has yet to return to his duties.

Yevkurov said Monday's suicide attack had been organized by militants trying to avenge recent security sweeps in the forests along the mountainous border with Chechnya.

"It was an attempt to destabilize the situation and sow panic," Yevkurov said in a statement issued through his spokesman.

Speaking in an interview with Russian News Service radio, Yevkurov blamed Chechen separatist warlord Doku Umarov for staging June's suicide attack on his convoy. He said law enforcement had tracked down the perpetrators of the attack, and would hunt down Umarov and other rebel warlords.

Yevkurov, a former officer of the Russian GRU military intelligence service, also accused the United States, Britain and Israel of fomenting instability in the North Caucasus.

"The West will try to prevent Russia from restoring its Soviet-era might," he said in the interview, without elaborating.

Rights groups said that arbitrary arrests, torture and killings by security forces had helped swell the ranks of rebels in Ingushetia under Yevkurov's predecessor, Murat Zyazikov. Yevkurov has promised to end abuses and sought to negotiate pardons for some rebels who would agree to put down their weapons.

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