Bus Blast Kills 2 in Stavropol (December 10, 2007)

[jlogajan]

Bus Blast Kills 2 in Stavropol
Reuters
A blast on a bus in southern Russia killed two people on Sunday, emergency services said, less than a month after five people died when a bomb exploded on a bus in a neighboring region.

The local prosecutor's office in Stavropol region was treating the blast as a terrorist attack, RIA-Novosti reported, quoting an unidentified official. Other sources said the explosion could have been caused by an exploding gas canister.

Stavropol borders the North Caucasus, which has been wracked by violence centered in the republic of Chechnya, which has fought two separatist wars since 1994.

The bus had been traveling from Stavropol to Pyatigorsk, also in the Stavropol region, when an explosion started a fire on the bus while it was parked at a station in the town of Nevinnomyssk.

Television pictures showed the burned-out shell of a red and white intercity bus. The back of the bus, above the engine, had been blown apart and its roof was curled back.

The blast killed two women and injured at least 11 people, Interfax quoted local emergency workers as saying.

On Nov. 22, a bomb tore apart a bus on the border of North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria, an attack blamed on rebels, and in October a bomb on a bus during the morning rush hour in the central car manufacturing city of Tolyatti killed at least eight people.

[jlogajan]

My RW lives in Pyatigorsk.   I just found these newstories about the bombs in buses.   She never mentioned them.  She took a bus in November from Pyatigorsk to Stavrapol to pick up her police report for the visa.  She took a train ride from Pyatigorsk to Moscow and back for her visa interview in December.