VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia -- Hospital medics fought Saturday to save the wounded survivors of a bombing in southern Russia, while politicians warned against a new outburst of ethnic violence in the tense north Caucasus region.
Police searched for a man and woman they suspect planted the bomb in the central market of the capital of North Ossetia region on Friday. The blast killed at least 51 people and severely wounded 104, said a duty officer at the local Interior Ministry office.Addressing an emergency session of the North Ossetian regional parliament in Vladikavkaz, Russian Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin said that the bombing was an "act of sabotage aimed at destabilizing the situation in the north Caucasus and throughout Russia, at instigating a clash between the peoples."
"A possible fueling of ethnic strife must be prevented," he said.
Investigators from the Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service -- the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB -- have said nothing about the leads they were following. NTV said that investiga-
tors had learned that a man and a woman planted the bomb in a sack of potatoes, which they left in a section of the market crowded with people lined up for vegetables.
Composite sketches of two suspects have been broadcast on television, and a nationwide search has been launched. Meanwhile, the borders separating North Ossetia from other Caucasus regions were closed Saturday.
Vladikavkaz, a city 940 miles southeast of Moscow, was quiet, with many streets blocked off by police to provide security to the visiting investigators. Coffin lids were propped up against many apartment buildings, signifying that one or more of their residents had perished in the bombing.
The blast shortly before noon on Friday was the worst violence to hit the small southern republic since a 1992 war with ethnic Ingush in which hundreds were killed. That conflict has not been resolved, and it occasionally flares in house-bombings and clashes between Ossetians and ethnic Ingush living in the republic.
But police are also looking farther afield for the culprits. Much of the violence that has plagued the Caucasus is blamed on criminals in Chechnya, where lawlessness has reigned since the 1994-96 war of independence against Russia.
The Federal Security Service put the death toll at 63, and said that 39 had been identified. Casualty estimates have varied between agencies and have fluctuated up and down, in part because many of the bodies were blown to pieces.
Many of the 104 hospitalized were in serious condition, and the death toll was expected to rise. Doctors said there was a serious blood shortage, and they were in such a hurry to do infusions that they could not adequately test it for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations delivered 1.5 tons of medical supplies to Vladikavkaz on Saturday, including blood substitutes, antibiotics, syringes and bandages, as well as a team of trauma-specialist doctors.
President Boris Yeltsin decreed Sunday a day of mourning for the victims of the attack, as well as for 21 inmates of a psychiatric hospital in central Russia who burned to death in a fire late Thursday.