MAKHACHKALA (Russia): A senior Muslim cleric and his brother were killed when their car was blown up overnight in the southern Russian province of Dagestan, the region's top prosecutor said on Friday.

Chief prosecutor Igor Tkachev told journalists at the scene in the regional capital Makhachkala that the “deputy mufti of the Muslim religious leadership”, Kurbanmagomed Ramazanov, and his brother Abdulla had been killed.

A third person in the car was injured by the blast, which was caused by a bomb attached to the vehicle, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Dagestan is a restive Muslim province on Russia's Caspian Sea shoreline. On its western side it neighbours war-torn Chechnya.

While it is frequently the scene of attacks by Islamic militants, law-enforcement authorities did not say who they considered responsible for Thursday's attack.

But the head of the Coordinating Centre of Muslims in the North Caucasus, Magomed Albogachiyev, said the attack was part of a systematic push to kill law-enforcement officials and religious leaders to destabilise the region.—AFP