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At least ten killed in second blast in Russia

Ten people have been killed in a blast on a trolleybus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, a day after a deadly suicide bombing at the city’s main train station, officials said.

“According to initial information, 10 people were killed and 10 were wounded” in the explosion, the spokeswoman of the local branch of the emergencies ministry Irina Gogoleva told the Interfax news agency on Monday.

Local journalist Leonid Ragozin says the explosion occurred at about 8.30am (local time) while the bus was stopped at a market.

“This market is also near the hospital where people were taken … who were injured in the previous blast, in the blast that took place yesterday at the train station in Volgograd,” he said.

President Vladimir Putin was briefed on the trolleybus attack by the Federal Security Service chief Mikhail Bortnikov, a Kremlin spokesman said.

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee said the previous explosion on Sunday at the central railway station (also in Volgograd) was set off by a suicide bomber, heightening concerns about terrorism ahead of February’s Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the nation’s top investigative agency, the Investigative Committee, said at least 13 people died in the blast.

Russia’s Health Ministry said about 50 people were injured.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack, but it came months after Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov called for attacks against civilian targets in Russia, including the Sochi Games.

Suicide bombings and other attacks linked to Islamic rebels have rocked Russia for years.

In October, a female suicide bomber blew herself up on a city bus in Volgograd, killing six people and injuring about 30. Officials said the attacker came from the province of Dagestan, which has become the centre of an Islamist insurgency that has spread across the region after two separatist wars in Chechnya  .

Russian state television reported that Sunday’s explosion occurred at the security gate at the station’s entrance. Footage from a security camera facing the station that was broadcast by Rossiya 24 television showed the moment of explosion: a bright orange flash inside the station behind the main gate followed by plumes of smoke.

· Background to the attacks explained

The television showed a line-up of ambulances outside the station and motionless bodies placed on the pavement.

The blast closely followed another attack on Friday in Pyatigorsk in the North Caucasus mountains, when a car rigged with explosives blew up on a street in the city, the centre of a federal administrative district intended to stabilise the North Caucasus region.

The attacks come just weeks before Russia is due to host the winter Olympics in the city of Sochi, with some questioning whether the games themselves could be terrorist targets.

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