May 15, 2003	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 12, 1424

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MOSCOW, May 14: Thirty people were killed and 150 wounded in Chechnya on Wednesday when a woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the middle of an Eid-i-Milad function.

Quoting Chechen Emergency Minister Ruslan Avtayev, Itar Tass said 50 of the injured were in a serious condition. Some sources said there were far fewer dead and injured.

The Kremlin’s office on Chechnya and other officials said the latest attack, which followed a suicide bombing on Monday that killed 59 people, took place in mid-afternoon at a small town called Iliskhan-Yurt, east of the Chechen capital, Grozny.

“A woman terrorist blew herself up in a crowd of Muslim believers who had gathered for celebrations,” a Chechen information department official said,” the official said.

About 15,000 people had turned out for the celebrations in the town to mark the birthday of the Holy Prophet (pbuh).

The Itar-Tass agency quoted police as saying that the head of the Chechen administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, had been present at the time and it could not be ruled out that the attack had been intended to kill him.

Officials said, however, that Mr Kadyrov had not been hurt.

The latest suicide attack came just two days after three suicide bombers drove a truck loaded with explosives into a government office complex in the north of the region.

It also coincided with the visit of US Secretary of State Colin Powell to Moscow, where Mr Putin was preparing for talks with the visiting diplomat on the US-led “war on terrorism”, which Russia has backed.

The two attacks took place just seven weeks after a Kremlin-organized constitutional referendum that anchored the Muslim region firmly in Russia.

After Monday’s bomb, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to stick to his peace plan for the region to end nearly 10 years of armed conflict between Chechen fighters and Russian forces that has cost thousands of lives.—Reuters