You're reading: Suicide bomber kills policeman in Russia’s North Caucasus

MOSCOW - A suicide bomber blew up his car at a police checkpoint in Russia's restive North Caucasus region on Tuesday, killing a policeman and severely wounding three others, authorities said.

The pre-dawn attack destroyed the checkpoint on the internal
border between the province of North Ossetia and Ingushetia. The
region is plagued by near daily violence blamed on Islamist
insurgents.

“A policeman stopped a car to conduct a check, and its
driver detonated a bomb,” the Russian Interior Ministry said on
its website.

Televised footage showed shards of blue corrugated metal and
other pieces of the small building scattered around the site
with the snow-capped Caucasus Mountains in the background.

Moscow is struggling to extinguish the insurgency that stems
from its two devastating wars against separatists in 1994-2000
in Chechnya, just east of Ingushetia and North Ossetia.

There is also lingering tension between mostly Christian
North Ossetia and mostly Muslim Ingushetia two decades after a
territorial dispute erupted into a brief war in 1992, but there
was no indication the bombing was linked to that conflict.

President Vladimir Putin told security forces last week that
they must ensure there are no attacks on major events Russia is
to host in the coming years including the 2014 Winter Olympics
in Sochi, near the North Caucasus.