RUSSIA: A bomb tore through a packed market in the central Russian city of Samara yesterday, killing at least nine people and injuring 33 others.
After initially blaming exploding gas cylinders for the blast, investigators said that about one kilogram of plastic explosive had actually been detonated in the outdoor bazaar, causing carnage as shoppers stocked up for the weekend.
Police did not say whom they suspected of planting the bomb, but many such attacks are the result of "turf wars" between criminal groups.
Russia is also on alert for a surge in Chechen rebel activity, after they blew up the region's pro-Moscow president last month.
"We have dismissed the possibility that this was caused by gas canisters. Our main hypothesis now is that it was an act of terrorism," said a police spokesman in Samara.
Russian police often call high-profile attacks "terrorism", even when committed by mafia groups.
Russian television showed the mangled wreckage of metal stalls and their contents strewn across a wide area, and bodies lying beneath bloodied sheets on the ground.
"The explosion was very powerful, and the place was packed with people," said Mr Timofei Zakharchenko, a spokesman for the Samara branch of the Emergencies Ministry.
Mr Alexander Yefremov, the Samara regional prosecutor, said the bomb had gone off near railway tracks behind the bazaar, where he estimated at least 300 people were shopping and manning stalls when the blast occurred about noon.
He said a passing train could have been the target of the attack.
Russian police said dozens of people who were standing on a nearby platform may only have been spared serious injury by a truck which was passing by when the bomb exploded, shielding them from the main brunt of the blast.