Minister killed in Dagestan

An explosion ripped through the courtyard of an apartment building in southern Russia’s Dagestan region today, killing two people including a minister in the regional government, police said.

Police said several others were injured.

Zagir Arukhov, Dagestan’s minister for ethnic policy, information and external communications, was killed by the blast, which occurred outside a building across from a police station in the regional capital, Makhachkala, police spokeswoman Marina Rasulova said. The other victim was an unidentified woman, she said.

Rasulova had initially said two women were killed in the explosion. She had no information about injuries, but an unnamed police official said an unspecified number of people were injured.

An ethnically mixed, mostly Muslim region on the Caspian Sea, Dagestan borders Chechnya and is plagued by violence, some of it linked to the war between Russian forces and Chechen rebels and some to local criminal activity.

For months, Dagestan has seen a series of bombings and other attacks on police and other law enforcement authorities.