Blasts, Kidnapping Hit Caucasus Region

Russia’s northern Caucasus was jolted by explosions that killed four people and by the kidnapping of a New Zealand Red Cross worker. The area, a patchwork of hundreds of ethnic and religious groups, has been gripped since the 1991 collapse of Soviet rule by general instability and a war that killed tens of thousands in one of its regions, separatist Chechnya. Explosions in three apartment blocks housing military personnel in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, near Chechnya, killed four, an official said. Meanwhile, Red Cross worker Geraldo Cruz Ribeiro was abducted from his car by a band of gunmen in the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria.