Official Injured, Wife Killed in Caucasus Bomb Attack

A car bomb in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Monday seriously wounded an officer with the Russian FSB security service and killed his wife, investigators said.

"An explosive device blew up under a Ford Focus at in the morning in Makhachkala," Yegor Balashov, a spokesman for regional investigators, told Agence France Presse, referring to Dagestan's regional capital.

"A FSB colonel was at the wheel" and was seriously wounded, while his wife was killed, he said.

The powerful blast was the third to hit Makhachkala over the past 12 hours.

A small explosive device went off in a shop Sunday evening but no-one was wounded, Balashov said.

Also Sunday, a suspected militant accidentally blew himself up as he was transporting the explosives.

Russia is fighting a simmering Islamist insurgency in the Caucasus, mostly in Dagestan and Ingushetia.