Eight people, seven of them police, have been killed in a suicide attack in Grozny, the capital of Russia’s restive southern republic of Chechnya.
A police source told Interfax the bomber blew himself up when a police patrol tried to detain him.
Sixteen were wounded in the attack, which occurred not far from a local parliament building and at the end of Ramadan.
Reuters quoted residents as saying they heard gun shots after the explosion.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said a “zombified bandit” had tried to carry out a terrorist attack on the most sacred day for Muslims.
Quoted by the RIA news agency, the Moscow-backed Chechen leader said, “the bandits have shown their real face which only proves that this evil should be eradicated.”
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Russian forces drove separatists out of power in Chechnya a decade ago, but the Kremlin is still battling an Islamic insurgency in the north Caucasus.
The violence has now spread from Chechnya to other mainly Muslim regions.
compiled from agency reports