Russia Blames Feared Islamist for Suicide Strike

A regional leader in Russia's restless North Caucasus on Tuesday accused a feared Islamist who has claimed some of Moscow's deadliest bombings of organizing a suicide strike that killed seven police.

"It is clear that the organizer of this terrorist attack is Doku Umarov," the state RIA Novosti news agency quoted Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov as saying.

A suicide bomber, identified by the authorities by his last name Aldiyev on Sunday, killed seven policemen as they arrived at a colleague's funeral over the weekend. Fifteen people were injured in the blast.

Umarov, reported dead by the authorities on repeated occasions and viewed as the country's enemy number one, heads a militant movement that for years has been trying to impose an Islamist state throughout the mainly Muslim Caucasus.

His Caucasus Emirate group has claimed atrocities including a deadly Moscow airport bombing in 2011 and a metro attack in the capital in 2010.

Yevkurov also said that besides the suicide bomber and Umarov, the authorities had also identified the immediate organizer of the attack.