Four arrested over south Russian traffic police HQ bomb

Russian police have arrested four men in connection with the bombing of a traffic police headquarters in the southern city of Volgograd last month.

The men, aged between 28 and 30, are members of a criminal gang detained in the neighboring Astrakhan region earlier this month.

The April 26 explosion damaged the entrance to the traffic police headquarters in Volgograd, though no one was hurt.

“According to investigators, the suspects set up an armed group in January 2011,” Vladimir Markin, spokesman of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office, told reporters on Monday.

Markin said the men carried out the attack as a “test act of terror.”

A second explosive device planted outside the city’s Interior Ministry Academy was defused by police.

A criminal case was opened on charges of hooliganism and illegal arms trafficking.

More that a decade after the end of a federal war against separatists in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, Russian security forces continue to fight militants in other regions of the North Caucasus, who stage frequent attacks on security forces, police and civilians.

MOSCOW, May 23 (RIA Novosti)

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