Female Bomber 'Splodes on Russian Bus

(Volgograd, Russia)

A female suicide bomber attacked a bus in southern Russia on Monday, authorities said, killing at least six people in the deadliest such blast outside the volatile North Caucasus region in nearly three years.

The bombing in Volgograd was likely to raise fears of further attacks by Islamist militants as Russia prepares to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in February in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, not far from the mainly Muslim North Caucasus.

The attack, which investigators blamed on a 30-year-old woman from Dagestan - the North Caucasus province at the center of an insurgency - also wounded 28 people, of whom eight were in critical condition, the federal Investigative Committee said.

State television showed footage, taken from a camera mounted on a driver's dashboard, of an explosion ripping through the bus as it travelled along a tree-lined road, sending shards of metal and glass flying.

Wearing a hijab when she boarded the bus, the female perpetrator has been identified as 30-year-old Naida Asiyalova who had associations with an insurgent group in Dagestan.