Bombs kill two, injure 33 in Russia's Ingushetia

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - A series of bomb blasts in Russia's Ingushetia region Friday killed at least two people and wounded 33, including senior police officials, authorities said.

Many of the victims were police officers drawn to the scene by initial explosions, officials said, suggesting they were lured into a trap, a common tactic of insurgents in Ingushetia and neighboring Chechnya.

The toll underscored the Kremlin's inability to rein in violence in the North Caucasus, scene of near-daily attacks blamed on Islamic militants.

The explosions killed a police officer and the owner of the house where the initial mid-morning blasts occurred, the federal Investigative Committee said. At least two more bombs exploded after more law enforcement officers arrived, it said.

A total of 33 people were hospitalized with injuries, including 22 law enforcement officers, it said.

Nazran's police chief and the head of the Nazran branch of the Investigative Committee were among the wounded, Interfax quoted the spokeswoman for the committee's Ingushetia the Investigative Committee were among the wounded, Interfax quoted the spokeswoman for the committee's Ingushetia branch, Svetlana Gorbakova, as saying. According to Ingushetia's chief prosecutor, Yuri Turygin, the initial blasts occurred after police officers went to the house to check a report that a bomb had been found there, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. Other accounts said police had been told insurgents were holed up in the house. An upsurge in violence in Ingushetia, Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan has alarmed the Kremlin nearly a decade after government force s defeated Chechen rebels in the second of two separatist wars. President Dmitry Medvedev has called the violence in

the heavily Muslim North Caucasus Russia's main domestic problem. It undermines the Kremlin's authority and its control

over a vulnerable border area adjacent to the energy transport routes of the south Caucaus and nearby Turkey. Authorities blame Islamic militants for most of the attacks. Medvedev sent a new envoy to the North Caucasus this year to tackle the root causes of the unrest such as poverty and corruption.

(Reporting by Conor Sweeney and Steve Gutterman; Editing by Louise Ireland and Steve Gutterman)