Suicide bomber attack kills 5 in Chechen capital

PanARMENIAN.Net - A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the Chechen capital Grozny, also killing five police officers and wounding at least 12 other people, BBC News reported.

The attack took place outside a hall where a concert marking Grozny's City Day was about to take place.

An interior ministry statement said police were searching a "suspicious" young man when he detonated a device. The statement said that police officers on duty at the event "noticed a suspicious young man near metal detectors set up at the concert hall".

"When the police decided to search him and establish his identity, the man blew himself up," it said.

The bomber was identified as 19-year-old Opti Mudarov, a resident of Grozny. The ministry said he had disappeared two months ago and had had no contact with his family since then.

Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said he would decorate the police officers involved for preventing what it described as a major terrorist act.

"They gave their lives to save thousands of people who had come to the concert," Itar-Tass news agency quoted the ministry as saying.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said the bomber "wanted to ruin people's joy on their day of celebration, but he has not succeeded". He also pledged to find and punish the perpetrators.