Russian Suicide Attack Toll Rises to 41

[newyawker99]

The death toll in a suicide attack on a Russian military hospital near Chechnya that officials suspect was carried out by Chechen rebels climbed to 41 Saturday, officials said.

The suicide attacker rammed a truck packed with explosives through the gates of the four-story red brick hospital Friday night in the city of Mozdok in the North Ossetia region, the region's Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said. He said that at the moment of the explosion, there were 98 patients and 21 employees inside the building, which collapsed like a house of cards.

Robert Kireyev, a spokesman for the Emergency Situation Ministry in southern Russia, said that the death tool reached 41 by Saturday evening and that 36 bodies had been identified. He said 59 of the 79 people injured remained hospitalized, 10 of them in critical condition.

Dzgoyev said many of the injured were soldiers who were recovering from wounds suffered in Chechnya, where Russia's second war against rebels in a decade has lasted nearly four years.


Russian suicide