MOSCOW — An explosion Tuesday outside a five-star hotel near Red Square killed at least six people and wounded 13 others in what authorities said was a prematurely detonated suicide bomb attack apparently intended for the nearby parliament building.
The attack, which officials blamed on Chechen separatists and said was carried out by a female suicide bomber, came just two days after parliamentary elections in Russia gave President Vladimir Putin and his allies an overwhelming victory, increasing the president's hold on power.
It was the latest in a wave of violence to rock Russia. A suicide bomb attack last Friday in southern Russia killed 44 people. In July, two female suicide bombers killed 15 people in Moscow at an outdoor concert.
Meeting nearby in the Kremlin with members of parliament, Putin said in televised comments that the actions of "terrorists" like those who struck Tuesday were aimed at destroying Russia's democracy and economy.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said one, possibly two women, walking on the street stopped to ask a bystander, "Where is the Duma?" referring to Russia's lower house of parliament. The State Duma is on the opposite side of the street from the posh National Hotel, where the explosion occurred.
"Evidently the bomb went off by accident," said Luzhkov. "The National Hotel was not the place where the suicide bombers had planned to stage the explosion."
Luzhkov later said after viewing a security camera tape of the explosion that it appeared that at least one of the women was a suicide bomber. Police were searching for the second woman, warning that she might also be carrying explosives.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but in the past Chechen militants have used suicide bombings as a tactic in their war to push Russian forces out of the breakaway region of Chechnya in southern Russia.
A truck-bomb attack last December destroyed the headquarters of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed government and killed 72 people, and another killed 60 at a government compound in the region in May.
The explosion Tuesday occurred mid-morning on a sidewalk outside the National, a hotel that is popular with foreign visitors and has housed White House staff and the American press corps in previous visits to Moscow by U.S. presidents.
Five windows on the first two floors of the six-story building were broken, and white curtains fluttered through the open windows in a freezing wind. The injured were taken to local hospitals, but apparently because of worries that there might be another bomb in the area, officials left some of the dead on the wet sidewalk for hours as heavy snowflakes fell.
Police officers used a remote-controlled robotic device to examine and destroy what were believed to be other explosives devices.
Vladimir Umerkov, a 45-year-old chauffeur, was in his car waiting for a client inside the hotel when the bomb went off. He got out of his car to help some of the wounded.
"A body was lying there and the head was separate," said Umerkov, who was not hurt. "There was no damage to the car except pieces of meat, the whole car was covered with pieces of meat," said Umerkov, referring to human flesh.
Tuesday's explosion in the heart of Moscow followed parliamentary elections Sunday which gave the Putin-allied United Russia party a huge victory.
Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after a two-year war to squash an independence movement there. But after a series of apartment bombings in 1999 in Moscow and other Russian cities that Russian officials blamed on Chechen rebels, Russian forces reentered Chechnya.
Russian soldiers, civilians and Chechen fighters die almost every day in Chechnya, but the war rarely makes it onto television screens or into the pages of the newspapers.
Putin rose to power in 1999 with his tough handling of Chechnya and vowed to bring order to the region without negotiating with Chechen fighters. The ongoing conflict played little role in the parliamentary elections.