Four men have been arrested, including a Chechen policeman, for the car bomb blast that killed 17 civilians in Chechnya on Saturday, a top Russian military official told Interfax Sunday.
Detectives trailed and then arrested the four Chechens after the car blew up in a square near a mosque in the southern village of Alkhan-Yurt in the Urus-Martan district, the deputy chief of the Russian general staff, General Valery Manilov said.
One of the men, who were all in their 20s, was believed to be a member of the Chechen unit of the OMON, Russia's elite paramilitary force, he told the news agency.
Manilov said 17 civilians were killed in the blast and 18 injured, however an earlier report from the deputy head of the Urus-Martan district Lecha Mamatsuyev said at least 22 people had died and 52 were injured.
The office of Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, also gave a different casualty toll, telling the news agency that only 16 people had been killed and 20 injured in the blast.
Yastrzhembsky's office said the victims were aged from eight to 70 -- MOSCOW (AFP)
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