MOSCOW, May 17: A deputy interior minister and police chief was among seven people killed on Wednesday in the restive southern Russian province of Ingushetia when a suicide bomber blew up his car as the official’s convoy passed by, police said.

“The suicide bomber blew up his car as the convoy of the deputy interior minister Dzhabrail Kostoyev passed by as he was on his way to work” in Ingushetia’s main town of Nazran, a spokesman for the province’s interior ministry told AFP by phone. “The blast was very powerful,” the spokesman, Akhmed Aushev, said.

In addition to Kostoyev, a deputy interior minister of the province in charge of the police, his two bodyguards and four bystanders were killed in the attack, police said.

Attacks targeting police officials are a frequent occurrence in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus and where clashes between law enforcement forces and pro-Chechen rebels take place regularly.

In June 2004, several hundred rebels led by Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev launched a large-scale assault on Russian government installations in Nazran, leaving dozens of people dead, most of them police officers.—AFP