Car Bomb Kills 11 Near Seat of Chechnya’s Government : Russia: The latest terrorist act is a reminder that conflict convulses the breakaway republic despite a partial peace pact.

In a deadly reminder that conflict still convulses rebel Chechnya, a car-bomb explosion Monday killed at least 11 people at a busy outdoor bazaar on the doorstep of the Moscow-installed government.

The noon blast in the center of Grozny, Chechnya’s shattered capital, blew out windows for several blocks, hurled one car 30 feet and singed trees in the square where the detonation left a 6-foot-wide crater.

Russia’s Independent Television network said that as many as 18 people may have been killed and more than 60 injured but that confusion clouded the death toll because Muslim relatives of some victims hurriedly evacuated the corpses for burial by sunset, according to religious custom.

Television footage from the scene showed charred devastation. Twisted hulks of cars smoldered amid the rubble of damaged buildings. Dirty blankets covered the bodies of street traders and shoppers felled in the crowded square outside the republic’s administration building.

The latest terrorist act served as a sobering reminder that the Kremlin’s year-old assault on the breakaway republic may have slowed but security and reconstruction remain farfetched illusions.

Monday’s attack was the latest demonstration by Chechen rebels that they can wreak havoc, even if they have all but lost the war that started after the Kremlin sent troops into Chechnya on Dec. 11.

The top commander of Russian forces in the republic lies paralyzed in a Moscow hospital after an October bomb attack, and two senior Kremlin-appointed officials have narrowly escaped assassination attempts this fall.

Less than two weeks ago, Chechen rebels directed a Russian television crew to a cache of radioactive material buried in a Moscow park--a pointed warning that the nearly vanquished insurgents can strike at the heart of Russia.

The federal government and Chechen fighters loyal to president-in-hiding Dzhokar M. Dudayev signed a partial peace accord July 30, agreeing to disarm the rebels, release prisoners and replace federal troops with local militias.

But Dudayev loyalists refused to submit to the Kremlin’s terms for a political settlement, which would compel them to officially concede Chechnya remains a part of Russia.

The federal government has installed a cooperative regime to administer Chechnya, but it has suffered repeated ambush attacks by Dudayev forces now pressing their independence bid through terrorist actions.

Rebel harassment of the Russian power structure is expected to intensify as Dec. 17 elections near--a political contest the Chechen holdouts have denounced as a Kremlin ploy to oust Dudayev and lend a veneer of credibility to the Moscow-appointed leadership.

Meanwhile, on Monday, a former political foe of President Boris N. Yeltsin registered as a candidate for the Chechen presidency. Former federal Parliament Speaker Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, a 53-year-old Chechen, led a political uprising against Yeltsin in the fall of 1993 that ended in armed conflict in the center of Moscow.

Dudayev supporters plan to boycott the vote for federal representation and a local leadership, and threats of further terrorist actions are expected to deter voter turnout among many Chechens.