Children and female hostages were released from the southern Russian siege school this afternoon, not long after suicide assailants had fired rocket-propelled grenades at cars.

At least six people were killed in a blast outside a busy Moscow underground station tonight by a suspected woman suicide bomber, early reports said.

Eight people were killed and 10 injured when a car blew up near a Moscow underground station tonight.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell clashed with the United Nations refugee Agency chief yesterday over the EU’s proposed treatment of asylum seekers.

A SUICIDE attacker set off an explosion that tore through a commuter train yesterday near the rebellious region of Chechnya, killing 40 people and wounding scores of others.

Chechnya’s Kremlin-appointed leader was assured of victory in the region’s presidential vote, a widely expected outcome after his main challengers withdrew or were removed from an election condemned by critics as a sham.

TWO suicide bombers drove a truck full of explosives into a government complex in Russia’s rebel Chechnya yesterday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has pinned his hopes for peace on a last month’s contested referendum, but observers have doubted the Kremlin’s claim that most Chechens turned out and voted to approve the constitution which sets the republic’s place as part of Russia.

The al-Qaida leadership has been driven out of Afghanistan and is now plotting terror strikes from within Pakistan, a US military commander said today.

More than a thousand fighters who have been defending the city of Kunduz have surrendered to the Northern Alliance.

It has been reported there is a bomb on board the Russian plane hijacked by Chechens.