Amateur video shown on Russian websites and TV channels on Wednesday (March 31) captures the moment a second suicide attack hit police in Kizlyar, Dagestan.
A suicide bomber dressed in a police uniform set off the second of two blasts in Kizlyar, which killed the town's police chief and several other officers, regionalpolice and prosecutorial officials told Reuters.
The bomber pushed his way into a crowd of police andonlookers drawn by a massive car-bomb blast, officials said - a common tactic of North Caucasus insurgents, who have been attacking law enforcement authorities almost daily.
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Televised footage showed two gutted cars and a deep crater on a debris-strewn street lined by bare trees, and a red brick schoolhouse with its windows blown out and roof partly ripped off.
Reports said there were no children in the school.
The car bomb exploded with the force of as much as 200 kilograms of TNT, Russian news agencies quoted prosecutorial investigators in Dagestan as saying.
A police official said a black four-wheel-drive Niva vehicle had exploded after traffic police tried to stop it, indicating a suicide bomber had been behind the wheel.
Russia's federal Investigative Committee, however, said the Niva had been parked when the blast occurred. The blasts killed 12 people, nine of them police officers, and 23 others were hospitalized, the Investigative Committee said.
A provincial police spokesman said Kizlyar police chief Vitaly Vedernikov was among the dead. In addition to police, an investigator from the prosecutor's office and a civilian were killed, Russian news agencies cited police as saying.
