MOSCOW, June 5: A woman suicide bomber ambushed a bus carrying Russian air force pilots near Chechnya on Thursday, blowing it up and killing at least 18 people, defence and justice officials said.

The attack was the third in three weeks by women suicide guerillas fighting for Chechen independence and came on the eve of a Russian parliament vote on a partial amnesty for rebel fighters designed to improve prospects for a Kremlin peace plan.

The attack occurred in Russia’s North Ossetia region, bordering Muslim Chechnya, after the bus carrying the pilots and a group of civilians attached to the air force stopped near a railway crossing on the outskirts of Mozdok.

Officials said the woman tried to board the bus, which stopped to take on workers, and then detonated the bomb when she was unable to do so.

In Moscow, Russia’s prosecutor general told President Vladimir Putin, who vowed to crush the Chechen uprising when he took office in 2000, that 18 people had been killed. About 12 others were wounded.

Eight servicemen were among the dead, including four air force officers, officials said.

Putin, who will seek re-election early next year, has been pushing a peace plan for Chechnya following a Kremlin-organized referendum in March that locked the region into Russia. Russian officials assumed the attack was the work of Chechen rebels.

As part of the plan the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, was to take a final vote on Friday to bring a partial amnesty into force.

Chechen rebels and human rights groups have ridiculed the limitations of the amnesty offer, saying it excludes hard-core fighters.—Reuters