May 10, 2002 4 min read

KASPIISK, Russia (AP) – A remote-controlled bomb shattered a holiday parade Thursday in a Russian town near Chechnya, killing at least 36 people, including children and members of a marching band that had just struck up the tune “Victory Day.” Streams of blood trickled down the tree-lined road after the blast, which injured about 150. A mangled drum heaped with flowers lay next to a pile of abandoned horns and an empty boot.

No one claimed responsibility, but regional officials blamed Islamic militants who have organized previous attacks in the restive region, Dagestan. A 1996 blast in a Kaspiisk building that housed Russian border guards killed 68 people. Officials never determined who was responsible.

On Thursday, a marine band had just started playing the namesake song of Victory Day, which honors the anniversary of the Allied defeat of the Nazis in World War II. Children ran in front, cheered on by veterans, as the musicians and other servicemen headed to the cemetery in the Caspian Sea port of Kaspiisk for a wreath-laying ceremony.

Then the bomb – an anti-personnel mine, packed with metal fragments, according to witnesses – blew up.

“When I got there, I saw a mound of bodies, people in panic,” said Magomad Akhmedov, a 35-year-old teacher. “Someone began giving first aid, some started to bind people’s wounds and stop the blood with whatever they could find.”

Aminat Kuliyeva’s children were playing on the street during the celebration.

“When I heard the blast I ran out to search for them, and I froze,” Kuliyeva said. “All around were the dead, lots of blood, people screaming.”

Eighteen servicemen – most of them musicians – 13 children and five adult bystanders were killed in the Kaspiisk blast, said a duty officer in the Dagestan department of the Emergency Situations Ministry.

NTV television showed footage shot minutes after the explosion. Soldiers in camouflage uniforms lay sprawled in the middle of the street, blood streaming from their wounds. Men carried limp children to waiting ambulances, as policemen shooed away shocked bystanders still clutching flowers they had planned to lay at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Screams filled the air.

The explosion was the latest of a series of terrorist and criminal attacks that have rocked the southern region. But coming on Victory Day, it shocked and angered people across Russia. News of the explosion broke during the annual military parade on Red Square, where thousands of troops marched past Russian President Vladimir Putin and World War II veterans.

Putin appointed the head of the Federal Security Service to oversee the investigation into what he called a terrorist act.

“Today is the dearest holiday for our people. … Today’s act was committed by scum for whom nothing is sacred,” he told guests at a Victory Day reception. “We have the right to view (the perpetrators) as we view Nazis, as those whose purpose is to sow terror and kill.

“But however difficult the tasks before us today, they will be solved.”

The mine was enclosed in a metal canister and was equivalent in force of 61/2-11 pounds of TNT, according to the regional Interior Ministry. It was hidden under greenery in a ditch along Lenin Street, the main street of Kaspiisk.

Unlike normal practice, there were no police cordons along the route to the cemetery, Patrushev said.

In contrast to other blasts in the Caucasus region, officials did not rush to blame Chechen rebels. Prosecutors believed the attack was staged by Islamic militants based in the region, members of the strict Wahhabi branch of Islam. Dagestan sees frequent small-scale bombings and other unrest, often spillover violence from Chechnya.

“This terrorist act was aimed at destabilizing the situation in Dagestan,” said Abdul Musayev, spokesman for the regional Interior Ministry.

Prosecutor general Imam Yaraliyev expressed hope that an alleged Dagestani terrorist who was detained earlier this week, Zaur Akabov, would reveal who had organized the blast.

Meanwhile, rebels fired on a stadium in the Chechen capital of Grozny, where Russian forces and Chechen civilians had gathered for Victory Day celebrations. Four police officers were wounded, according to an official in Chechnya’s Moscow-backed administration.

Other rebel attacks around the republic in the last 24 hours killed four Russian servicemen and wounded seven, the official said on condition of anonymity. While large-scale fighting in Chechnya has subsided, rebels continue to stage raids and mine blasts that kill Russian troops daily.

Chechnya won de facto independence after a 1994-6 war between separatists and Russian troops. Russian forces returned in 1999 after Chechnya-based rebels invaded Dagestan and a series of apartment house bombings around Russia left 300 dead. The bombings were blamed on rebels.