A car bomb killed three people and injured five on Wednesday in a town near Russia's restive Chechnya region, local officials said. The bombing in the Dagestan region appeared to have been aimed at two high-ranking regional officials, including Dagestan's deputy prime minister, who were driving away in an armoured Mercedes. Neither was hurt. The blast went off when the officials had driven a few metres from the government building in the town of Kizlyar. The dead were two passers-by, including a woman, and the driver of a car accompanying the officials, said Ibragim Aliyev, head doctor at Kizlyar's hospital. Dagestan has been infected by a spillover of violence from Chechnya, where rebels have fought Russian rule for a decade. It is also prone to criminal clashes. Amuchi Amutinov, the Dagestani deputy prime minister targeted in Wednesday's attack, survived a previous assassination attempt that analysts blamed on a criminal gang. Amutinov also heads Dagestan's pension fund.
