Russia Calls Back-to-Back Bombs in Chechnya a Trap; at Least 19 Die

Back-to-back bombs exploded in a Chechen village Saturday, in what Russian officials called a trap set by rebels that killed at least 19 people.

“It certainly did not occur to us that rebels would conduct such an insidious act of terror against their own people,” said Lt. Gen. Valery Baranov, commander of Russia’s armed forces in Chechnya.

Baranov said a caller telephoned local officials in the separatist republic about 11 a.m., giving the location of a small car in the village of Alkhan-Yurt and saying it contained a bomb. Police who examined the vehicle found an explosive in the trunk and decided to detonate the bomb at the site, he said.

About an hour later, after residents gathered to look at the wreckage, a more powerful second bomb exploded. At least 19 people and perhaps as many as 22 were killed, Baranov said in an interview on state television. He gave the number wounded as 21.

“It was a trap,” Baranov said. Residents directed police to a suspect, who was taken into custody and confessed, he added.

Baranov described the second bomb as being “near” the vehicle, but Lt. Gen. Ivan Babichev--the republic’s military commandant, or administrator--said the second bomb was inside the car.

“[The sappers] forgot that bandits install so-called double explosion charges nowadays--after the first explosion, a second one always follows,” Babichev said.

The bombing was one of the most deadly since the Chechen rebels, who were pushed back into mountain hide-outs last spring, began concentrating on guerrilla tactics and terrorism. Baranov said they have been especially active in the past week, with Russian sappers having defused at least three car bombs and more than 30 other explosives.

Saturday’s bombings followed a series of blasts Friday in southern Russia and Chechnya. The most deadly was in the southern Russian city of Pyatigorsk, where twin bombs near a market killed three people and injured about two dozen. A smaller bomb in the Chechen town of Gudermes injured four pro-Russian policemen, according to government reports.

A pro-rebel Web site provided a different version of events, accusing Russian forces of setting off the Alkhan-Yurt car bomb in revenge for the previous day’s bombing in Gudermes, which they claimed killed 32 Russian servicemen.

“The Chechen command notes that dozens of residents of Alkhan-Yurt witnessed how Russian soldiers tinkered with the car for more than an hour, and that it exploded afterward,” the site claimed. (The site’s address is https://www.kavkaz.org.)

Each side routinely exaggerates the other’s losses and undercounts its own.

Russia sent troops into Chechnya nearly 15 months ago to oust rebels who had held the territory since the end of a 1994-96 war. Russia now occupies the vast majority of the republic, though Russian officials complain that the rebels have been able to hide among the civilian population and receive supplies over the republic’s southern border with the independent country of Georgia.

The Alkhan-Yurt bombing was the second-most deadly in Chechnya this year. On July 2, a car bomb outside a Russian barracks killed more than two dozen servicemen. That bomb was one of five to explode on the same day in an apparent coordinated attack that killed a total of 33 people, including the servicemen.

On Oct. 12, a car bomb exploded at a police station in Grozny, the Chechen capital, killing at least 10 people who were waiting in line for identification papers.