Leader of Russian Region Attacked

MOSCOW — The leader of an unstable republic near Chechnya, who had been installed by the Kremlin in an effort to tamp down tensions there, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt Monday morning, officials said.

The leader, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, president of Ingushetia, was being driven to work in a motorcade when it was hit by an enormous bomb. One or more of his bodyguards may have been killed, local news agencies said.



There were conflicting reports about the gravity of Mr. Yevkurov’ s wounds. He was said to be undergoing surgery at a local hospital.

Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Moscow, said the attack may have been a suicide bombing.

“It has been established that at the moment when the president’s motorcade was driving, an explosive device equivalent to some 70 kilos of TNT went off,” Mr. Markin told the Interfax news agency. “Early reports indicate that the bomb had been planted in a foreign-made car parked at the roadside in which a suicide terrorist could have been sitting.”

The attack underscored the difficulties facing the Kremlin as it continues to grapple with Muslim extremism, deep-seated corruption and clan rivalries in the northern Caucasus mountains, which are on Russia’s southern rim.

Mr. Yevkurov, a former Russian military intelligence officer, was appointed last fall by Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, after the unrest in Ingushetia escalated under the previous leader.

Mr. Yevkurov sought to portray himself as less dictatorial than his predecessor and more willing to build public trust. Seeking to reach out to opponents, he regularly met with politicians and human rights activists.

The Kremlin has depicted Chechnya, where two major wars were fought in the last two decades against Muslim separatists, as largely pacified under the leadership of its strongman president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov. In April, federal officials formally declared the end of military operations in Chechnya.

Still, violence has not completely subsided in Chechnya, and has spiked nearby. Earlier this month, the interior minister of another part of the Caucasus, Dagestan, was gunned down at a wedding for a colleague’s daughter.

President Medvedev then flew to Dagestan to denounce the violence, saying that the situation was “difficult and lamentable” and ordering a new crackdown.

A day later, a deputy chief justice in Ingushetia’s Supreme Court was assassinated.