Chechen President killed in stadium blast

Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov was among at least 20 people killed in a bomb blast at a Grozny stadium where he was attending Victory Day observances, officials said.

The explosive device, believed to be a land mine, was planted under the seats where Kadyrov and other dignitaries were watching the ceremonies marking the defeat of the Nazis in the Second World War.

Also killed was Eli Isayev, head of Chechnya’s State Council, Russian news reports said.

A top Russian commander, Colonel-General Valery Baranov, was initially reported killed, but officials later said he was in a critical condition. The city’s emergency medical centre said 24 people in all were killed and 46 wounded.

Reuters news agency said one of the dead was its photographer Adlan Khasanov, 33.

The blast in the heart of the capital, where Russian troops are omnipresent, underlined the intense security problems even as the Kremlin says normalcy is being restored after nearly five years of fighting against separatist rebels.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but suspicion inevitably fell on the rebels. Police and soldiers launched an extensive search after the blast and detained at least five people, news reports said.

“Justice will take the upper hand and retribution is inevitable,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the conclusion of Moscow’s Victory Day parade on Red Square, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The stadium’s VIP section collapsed into a jagged hole of torn wooden planks, sending up a plume of brown smoke.

Footage on Russia’s NTV television showed men in uniform dragging a man resembling Kadyrov covered in blood away from the broken seating area.

A spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry, Sergei Kozhemyaka, said that a second land mine was found near the VIP seats.

Russia marks the Allied victory over the Nazis every May 9 with military parades and fireworks around the country.

Security was especially tight across Russia. In 2002, a bomb exploded during a Victory Day military parade in the Caspian Sea port of Kaspiisk, killing 43 people, including 12 children.

Russian troops have been fighting Chechen insurgents for much of the last decade. The latest war began in September 1999. Despite superior numbers and firepower, Russian troops have been unable to uproot the rebels from their mountainous hideouts or banish them entirely from Grozny.

Kadyrov was a rebel commander during the separatists’ 1994-96 war that ended with Russian forces withdrawing. However, he became disenchanted during the period of Chechnya’s de-facto independence, complaining of the growing influence of the Wahhabi sect of Islam in the republic.

He broke with Aslan Maskhadov, who had been elected Chechen president in 1997, and in 2000 the Kremlin appointed him the republic’s top civilian administrator. He was elected president last October in a vote widely criticised as fraudulent.

The election was portrayed by the Kremlin as a substantial step forward for restoring order to Chechnya.

Refugees who have returned to Chechnya say that Kadyrov’s administration has withheld promised compensation for six months or more and many Chechens complain of seizures of civilians under his administration.

Kadyrov’s son Ramzan runs a security force that is widely blamed for civilian disappearances. Putin met this afternoon with the younger Kadyrov, the Kremlin press service said, although there was no further immediate information.

Chechen Prime Minister Sergei Abramov would become the republic’s acting president, the Kremlin said.