Bomb Kills 60, Injures 100 in Russia Market

Hellish scenes unfolded Friday in the heart of the northern Caucasus, Russia’s most volatile region, when a bomb exploded in an outdoor market, killing at least 60 people and injuring more than 100.

As Russian television showed horrific images of bloodied victims being wheeled on vegetable carts from the market in the city of Vladikavkaz, the blast sent shock waves all the way to the Kremlin, underscoring Russia’s impotence to rein in violence and terror in the region.

Security officials in Vladikavkaz, the capital of the Russian republic of North Ossetia, immediately ruled out gang warfare between rival mafia groups, claiming that the bomb was beyond the scale of local racketeers and must have been planted by outside terrorists. However, there were no leads on who was responsible.

“It was an awful sight. The devastation and death created something like a circle of hell about 30 meters [100 feet] in diameter,” local journalist Igor V. Lyanov said.

“People were really terrified. In the first few minutes after the explosion, many people . . . rushed for the gates to get away from the scene as soon as possible,” he said, adding that many survivors feared being called as witnesses.

The northern Caucasus has been riven by ethnic hatred, mafia violence, assassinations, kidnappings and warfare since the fall of the Soviet Union. Vladikavkaz is about 40 miles southwest of Grozny, the capital of the republic of Chechnya, where Russia waged war against guerrilla separatists from 1994 until 1996.

Lyanov described grisly tableaux after the bomb exploded about 11:30 on a busy market morning.

“There were puddles of blood everywhere, limbs and unrecognizable chunks of human flesh scattered about, with shreds of bloodied, dirtied clothing meshed with the debris of market stalls,” he said.

The area also was strewn with twisted metal from shattered stalls and vehicles.

Police said it was difficult to know exactly how many people had been killed because bodies were shattered by the power of the blast.

The corridors of local hospitals were crammed with carts bearing the injured and dead, as more and more victims arrived.

“It is like being at war. It seems like we’re on the front line here,” said Lana Guzoyeva, assistant to the chief doctor at the city’s largest hospital. “The injured keep arriving, and most of them are very critical cases. Some don’t have legs and arms. Some have broken skulls and terrible torn wounds all over their bodies.”

Police estimated that the bomb was equivalent to between 15 and 22 pounds of TNT. A brick wall of the market’s central trading hall, about 50 feet high, was flattened by the blast.

In a two-story shop opposite the market, all the windows were shattered. Shop owner Tamerlan Gudiyev said he feared his business will be ruined.

“Who will want to come and do business and invest in the city where innocent people are slaughtered by the dozen in broad daylight?” Gudiyev asked. “I fear that war has come to our threshold. I am scared witless. I want to run away from this dead marketplace and this dead shop.”

As dozens of police, rescue workers and security officials combed the wreckage, thick crowds of people surrounded the market, some of them weeping, concerned about missing relatives.

Deep tensions have existed between North Ossetia and neighboring republic Ingushetia since a brief war between them in 1992, but the mistrust and hatred go back centuries.

Friday’s attack came as Russia and Chechnya were negotiating a meeting between Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov and the Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov, after the kidnapping of a Russian Interior Ministry official, Maj. Gen. Gennady Shpigun, at the door of his plane in Grozny two weeks ago.

Chechnya, devastated by war, is disintegrating as competing warlords, each with his own private army, vie for control. Since the Chechen war ended, the northern Caucasus has slipped further out of the grip of the central authorities, who have proved powerless to stop the violence.

Russian forces are stationed throughout the northern Caucasus but not in Chechnya, from which they were withdrawn after the war ended.

Across Russia, markets such as the one in Vladikavkaz are controlled by mafia racketeers, and violence is not uncommon. However, local authorities discounted any suggestion of gangland violence in Friday’s attack, asserting that terrorists from outside North Ossetia were involved.

Speaking haltingly in a televised address, President Boris N. Yeltsin vowed after the bombing to wage a ruthless fight against terrorism.

Russian Interior Minister Sergei V. Stepashin and Deputy Vladimir Rushailo flew to Vladikavkaz on Yeltsin’s orders to take charge of the investigation.

In another Russian disaster Friday, 21 heavily sedated patients died in a fire in a psychiatric institution near the northern town of Ustyuzhna in the Vologda region.

Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.