MOSCOW (Reuters) – Two roadside explosions in Russia’s Ingushetia region near Chechnya injured a police officer on Saturday, and a separate blast targetted a major regional gas pipeline, regional officials said.
Two makeshift roadside bombs went off in the Ingush city of Malgobek when the police officer was driving to work in his car, a local interior ministry spokesman said.
Just hours after the incident, an explosive device blew up near a pipeline taking gas from North Ossetia to Georgia but did not damage it, a local emergencies ministry spokesman said.
He said the blast occurred on Ingushetia’s border with the southern Russian region of North Ossetia. The pipeline has been the target of a number of attacks in the past.
“Gas supplies have not been interrupted,” the official said.
Violence from a decade-long war by Chechen rebels against Russian troops has increasingly spilt over into neighbouring regions such as Ingushetia and Dagestan.
Police and troops die daily in Chechnya, and reports of blasts across the North Caucasus are common.
The latest blasts occurred less than a month after Ingushetia’s Prime Minister Ibrahim Malsagov survived an assassination attempt.