– FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBER IN DAGESTAN INJURED 18
A female suicide bomber blew herself up in the southern Russian region of Dagestan on Saturday 05/25/2013, injuring at least 18, including two children and five police officers, police said. The attacker was later identified as the Black Widow Madina Alieva, 25, a widow of two Islamic radicals killed by security forces.
It was the first suicide bombing in Dagestan since the Boston Bombings last month. The Tsarnaev brothers suspected of carrying out those attacks are ethnic Chechens who lived in this turbulent Caucasus province before moving to the U.S. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder brother who was killed a shootout with police days after the April 15 bombings, spent six months in Dagestan in 2012.
In Saturday’s attack, the bomber detonated an explosives-laden belt in the central square in the provincial capital, Makhachkala, Dagestan’s police spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said.
Madina Alieva was married to an Islamist who was killed in 2009 and then married another Islamic radical who was gunned downin 2012 , police spokeswoman Fatina Ubaidatova said.
This week, a double explosion in Makhachkala killed four civilians and left 44 injured (see also – Orekhovo Plot), while three security officers and three suspected militants have been killed in other incidents. One of the devices was in a parked car and the other was placed in a trash bin.
Although Chechen separatists were battered almost a decade ago, Islamists continue to move through the region’s mountains and forests with comparative ease despite security sweeps by federal forces and police under the control of local leaders loyal to the Kremlin.
Human rights groups say that abductions, torture and extrajudicial killings of young men suspected of militant links by Russian security forces have helped swell the rebels’ ranks. Caucasus experts say that Islamists routinely extort money from government officials and businessmen and attack or kill those who refuse to pay.
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