A blast rocked a cafe in Russia's North Caucasus on Tuesday, killing an unknown number of people, Itar-Tass reported, hours after a suicide bomber killed a policeman in a nearby region. State television said the cause of the cafe blast and the number of casualties in the city of Pyatigorsk in the Stavropol region were not immediately clear.
Interfax news agency said 18 people been taken to hospital after the cafe blast. The Stavropol regional branch of the Emergencies Ministry could not be immediately contacted for comment. In North Ossetia earlier, a suicide bomber blew himself up after approaching a checkpoint on a road near the border with Ingushetia province, a North Ossetian police official said. Tuesday's suicide attack was in North Ossetia's Prigorodny district, the site of a territorial dispute between ethnic Ossetians and Ingush that erupted into fighting in 1992 and remains a source of tension.