Authorities in a southern Russian province hit by a series of bomb explosions declared a day of mourning yesterday amid a huge security operation to capture those responsible.
Officials have linked the bombings, which killed 23 people and injured more than 100, to Chechen rebels. Newspapers said Saturday's blasts were a setback for Moscow's attempts to push the Chechnya conflict out of the public eye.
A municipal government spokeswoman in the resort town of Mineralnye Vody said six victims had been buried yesterday. They were among 21 killed when a booby-trapped car exploded at the entrance to a busy morning market.
The funerals were supposed to be low-key affairs held at different cemeteries but hundreds of mourners turned up with flowers to express their grief. Long funeral corteges rolled through the small town whose streets were lined with tearful residents. Crowds of teenagers came to say goodbye to their schoolmate Anya Denezhkina, one of six children to perish in the blast.
The spokeswoman said yesterday was declared a day of mourning in the Stavropol region where two of the three explosions to hit Russia over the weekend occurred.
The other bomb went off near a police station in the town of Yessentuki, killing no one but injuring a dozen people. A third explosion in neighbouring Karachayevo-Cherkessia killed two bomb disposal experts as they tried to defuse a car bomb.
Russia's Emergencies Ministry said that two people had died in hospital over the last 24 hours of wounds sustained in the Mineralnye Vody blast, bringing the overall toll to 23. About 20 injured were in hospital in a serious condition.
The attacks drew strong condemnation from outside Russia, including messages of sympathy from Belarus, Ukraine and the European Union. The Council of Europe called the bombings an attack against basic human rights.
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