MOSCOW - A powerful bomb killed a policeman and a passerby in the Dagestan capital of Makhachkala and injured four other people including another police officer, the republic's interior ministry said Wednesday.
An earlier report said the explosion on Tuesday had killed one person, a police officer who was trying to identify the contents of a parcel placed near a building that houses the state office cracking down on organized crime.
The bomb, packed with the equivalent of five kilos (10 pounds) of TNT and lengths of tubing and metal cable, blew a crater two meters (yards) across and 50 centimeters deep, police said.
The placing of the bomb close to two buildings containing police departments, led investigators to believe that the attack may have been the work of a terrorist or organized criminal gang that has made the police a specific target.
Since the beginning of this year, more than 20 police officers have been killed in Dagestan, a predominantly Moslem republic bordering on Chechnya, so far this year.
05/11/2005 09:56 GMT