Three Dead in Russian Explosions

M O S C O W, Sept. 4 -- A bomb tore through an outdoor marketcrowded with early-morning shoppers in this central Russian citytoday, killing three people and wounding at least three others inwhat officials said was part of a criminal turf war.

Another small explosion destroyed the windows of a boutique inthe northern city of St. Petersburg, but nobody was hurt. A policespokesman in St. Petersburg blamed that incident on organized crimeas well.

The blast in Ryazan, a small industrial city about 120 milessouth of Moscow, shattered a meat stall. Shards of torn metal andfood were strewn for yards around.

Two female vendors were killed immediately, and an unidentifiedman died of injuries later in the hospital, emergency officialssaid. Eleven people were injured, NTV television news reported.

The bomb was in a plastic bag placed on the corrugated metalroof of the meat stall, NTV quoted a witness assaying. It exploded when a saleswoman tried to move it, the witnesssaid.

”I was buying something, standing about five meters away, I turned around and there was an explosion,” a dazed-lookingman told state-controlled ORT television. ORT said the explosionwas the equivalent of 300 grams of TNT.

Fight to Control Protection RacketInterior Minister Vladimir Rushailo said a gang of Afghan warveterans and a rival group from Russia’s Caucasus region werecompeting to control a protection racket in the market. MostRussian outdoor markets pay protection money to criminal gangs, andbombings and contract killings by organized crime groups arecommon.

Rushailo dismissed the possibility that the blast was aterrorist attack carried out by Chechen rebels.

“This situation doesn’t have any relation to terror in thewidely understood sense. This was a local conflict,” he toldjournalists.

Police detained five people for questioning shortly after theexplosion, Interior Ministry spokesman Yevgeny Ryabtsev said.

The blasts came on the first anniversary of a series ofapartment bombings that were blamed on Chechen rebels. Some 300people were killed in the blasts, and Russia responded by movingits forces into the separatist province.