15 Killed in Russia Suicide Bomb Blast

At least, 15 people have been killed and more than 60 wounded on Thursday in a suicide bombing in the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz, reports say

"The blast in Vladikavkaz has been organised by a suicide bomber who drove up to the entrance of the market in a car," said a senior North Ossetian official, Taimuraz Mamsurov.

The attack was the latest to hit the Caucasus region, plagued by an Islamist-inspired insurgency.

Russia's President ordered his envoy for the Russian North Caucasus region, Alexander Khloponin, to urgently fly to Vladikavkaz.

Vladikavkaz is the only majority Christian region in Russia's largely Muslim North Caucasus and neighbours the Muslim region of Ingushetia which has been beset by deadly attacks over the last months.

Russia has been on a state of high alert after the double bombings carried out by two female suicide bombers on the Moscow metro on March 29 that killed 40 and wounded more than 100.

The Kremlin fought two wars against separatist rebels in Chechnya in the 1990s but the insurgency has now become more Islamist in tone and has spread to neighbouring Ingushetia and Dagestan.