MOSCOW -- A powerful bomb shattered an outdoor food market packed with families doing their weekend shopping in southern Russia Friday, killing at least 53 people and wounding scores of others, police said.
The bomb exploded in downtown Vladikavkaz, the regional capital of North Ossetia, which borders the breakaway region of Chechnya. The blast raked the busy market, shattering stalls and vehicles."The place looks like a meat grinder," said local journalist Olga Vyslova, reached by phone from Moscow, adding that the blast scene was littered with severed heads and limbs.
Police had no immediate details on what happened or who may have been responsible for the bombing. Local officers estimated the bomb had a blast equivalent to eight pounds of TNT.
The region has been hit by a wave of violence and lawlessness in recent years because of political and ethnic unrest and crime. In neighboring Chechnya, which claimed independence from Russia after a 1994-96 war, armed bands control several parts of the region.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Moscow, Viktor Beltsov, said 53 people had been killed and 101 injured in the blast.
Local people, many of them crying and shaking with grief, searched through the debris for survivors or helped ferry the injured to the hospital in ambulances and cars. Dozens of police officers and soldiers joined in the search.
Police said it was difficult to determine how many people were killed because many bodies had been torn to bits by the blast.