Dagestan: Car bombs kill eight, injure nearly two dozen
Investigators work at the site of a streetside bomb blast in Makhachkala, the capital of Russia’s volatile Dagestan region, on May 1, 2013. Eight more people were killed Monday, May 20 in a separate bomb blast.
At least eight people were killed and nearly two dozen injured after car bombs went off Monday in the Russian region of Dagestan.
The explosions happened in the capital Makhachkala of the semi-autonomous North Caucus republic.
It is believed that two blasts occurred just 15 minutes apart.
The second blast went off in a separate car while authorities investigated the first explosion.
CNN reported that there was only one blast and police were defusing the first bomb when the second went off.
The remote bombs were planted outside a court building and could have been an assassination attempt of court officials.
The restless region has seen a low-intensity insurgency by an Islamic militant movement against Russian authorities and police officers.
The movement has roots in the break-up of the Soviet Union and the separatist struggles that followed.
Violence has also spilled over from the once war-torn region of Chechnya where armed guerillas fought the Russian authorities for years.
Dagestan became more well-known to the Western public recently with the Boston marathon bombings suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev who were from the region.
The bombing was the deadliest attack the republic has seen this year.