MOZDOK. June 5 (Interfax-South) - A young woman blew up a bus carrying Air Force pilots in North Ossetia, the local government said.
"Eyewitnesses say it was a young woman. Nothing is left of her after the explosion," North Ossetian Prime Minister Mikhail Shatalov told Interfax on Thursday. Shatalov had gone to the scene of the terrorist act.
He denied that the suicide bomber had put her thumb out for the bus. Some media reported that the bus stopped, the woman got inside and then set off the bomb.
"The terrorist did not go inside the bus. She thrust herself under the moving bus and the bomb went off," Shatalov said.
Interfax asked Shatalov whether the woman was an ethnic Chechen. "I cannot say anything so far. The secret services are finding that out," he said.
A source in the North Ossetian police told Interfax that the suicide bomber had been standing 35 meters from a railroad crossing on the route of the bus.
"The bus stopped near the railroad crossing, the woman came up and set off the bomb," he said.
Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky told a news conference at the Interfax-South Office that the terrorist act was committed at a bus stop beyond the railroad crossing in Mozdok.
"The bus stopped past the railroad crossing to pick up people on their way to work at the airfield. The Shaheed (martyr - Interfax) woman ran up to the bus at that moment," Fridinsky said.
He said the suicide bomber approached the bus when the bus doors had already closed.
"She wanted to get inside the bus, but failed and blew herself up outside," Fridinsky said.
Investigators think the suicide bomber planned to penetrate the Mozdok military airfield, he said.
The terrorist act killed 15 and wounded 16 people, Shatalov said, referring to updated information as of 11:15 a.m. Moscow time (0715 GMT).
Other sources said earlier that the death toll had reached 15 to 17. Fridinsky said 16 people died in the blast.