Two explosions today seriously injured at least two people in Russia's Muslim Dagestan region in the North Caucasus, where the Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency, media reported.
They took place in the centre of Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala, and wounded a relative of an officer who worked for the Russian security service FSB, the successor to the KGB.
Suicide attackers that killed 40 on the Moscow metro last month have turned the global spotlight on Russia's mainly Muslim, turbulent trio of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya. Militants in Chechnya killed at least four members of the Russian security forces late last week.
The Islamist militants say they want a sharia-based, pan-Caucasus state independent of Russia, a struggle whose foundations were laid over 250 years ago.
In those three regions, at least 862 people were killed last year in clashes, bombing and gun battles, according to the Internet news agency Caucasian Knot.
Despite efforts by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to eradicate what he has called a "cancerous tumour", critics say poverty, patronage from abroad and heavy-handed tactics by Russian forces encourage the insurgency.
Reuters