NAZRAN, Russia — A suicide bomber rammed a truck into a police station in the Russian region of Ingushetia on Monday, killing at least 20 police in the worst attack to ravage the poor North Caucasus republic in years.
The blast, which wounded more than 130 people, undermined Kremlin claims that its efforts to bring calm and prosperity to the impoverished patchwork of ethnic groups, clans and religions were succeeding. It also stoked fears that Ingushetia has replaced Chechnya as the next battleground in the southern Russian region.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in Nazran, Ingushetia’s main city, which left the two-story building smoldering and a crater in the compound’s courtyard, where the attacker detonated the bomb.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev fired Ingushetia’s top police official and, in unusually harsh comments, said police forces were as much to blame as the attackers.
Ingushetia has been reeling from militant violence in recent months, including a suicide bombing that wounded the Kremlin-appointed leader, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov.
Yevkurov blamed militants who have battled security forces in the forests along the mountainous border with Chechnya. “It was an attempt to destabilize the situation and sow panic,” he said in a statement issued by his spokesman.
Investigators said the attacker crashed his truck through the gates of city police headquarters in Nazran as officers were lining up for their morning inspection. Police fired shots at the truck but failed to stop it.
The blast triggered a fire that raged for hours, destroying a weapons room where ammunition detonated.
Hours later, rescue teams searched for more victims in the gutted ruins and wrecked vehicles. A nearby apartment building and several offices were also badly damaged, and burned-out cars littered the street.
Emergency officials said 20 officers were killed and up to 138 people were wounded.
Monday’s bombing was the deadliest to hit Ingushetia since militant attacks June 21-22, 2004, killed nearly 90 people, mainly police officers.
The attack poses a serious challenge to the Kremlin and its policies in the largely Muslim North Caucasus, home to scores of different ethnic groups that have at various times battled Russian forces or fought among themselves.
Under Medvedev’s predecessor Vladimir Putin, a relative calm had returned to Chechnya after two separatist wars since 1994. Now that large-scale fighting has ended, the Kremlin has focused on pouring money into rebuilding efforts as well as bolstering local leaders’ authority.
But many of the leaders’ strong-arm tactics in controlling their regions have prompted a backlash. Chechnya’s president, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been blamed for widespread human rights abuses. In Ingushetia, Yevkurov’s predecessor, Murat Zyazikov, was loathed by much of the population for heavy-handed police abuses. He was forced out last year.
Rights groups and Caucasus experts have warned that arbitrary arrests, torture and killings by security forces are fueling resentment and turning the sympathies of some of the civilian population to rebel fighters.
