An explosion ripped through a graveside memorial service for the slain head of a veterans group on Sunday, killing at least 13 people in what authorities called a gangland turf war.
At least 14 people were injured by the blast, which hurled bodies and body parts as far as 70 yards and into the branches of the cemetery's tall birch trees.The dead included the man's widow and his successor at the veterans group.
The gruesome attack took place on a national holiday honoring the police. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin canceled a holiday concert that was scheduled for broadcast on Russia's two biggest TV networks.
Russia's top cop, Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov, took the explosion as a direct challenge from the "dregs" of society. "They threw down the gauntlet," he said. "We accept."
More than 100 people were gathered for the service for Mikhail Likhodey, who was killed on Nov. 10, 1994 by a bomb planted at the entrance to his Moscow apartment building.
Likhodey was the chairman of the Afghan Veterans Foundation and had been locked in a power struggle with a rival veterans' leader, Valery Radchikov. Radchikov was badly wounded in an attack a year later.
Police said a remote-controlled bomb was hidden under a table laden with vodka for the toasts sometimes offered to the memory of the departed.
Stanislav Zhorin, a Federal Security Service officer, told reporters at the cemetery on the capital's southern edge that the attack was "an old turf battle, a settling of accounts that started with Likhodey's death."
However, one of Likhodey's associates, Franz Klintsevich, blamed the bombing on outsiders trying to take over the veterans organization.