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Musa Sadulayev / AP
The scarred road where a suicide bomber blew himself up Friday in Grozny.
The bomber detonated the explosives near a police checkpoint several hundred meters from the ministry building in Grozny on Friday, Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov said.
The attack comes a month after the Kremlin declared the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya over, effectively ending a security regime imposed in September 1999 when federal troops poured into the North -Caucasus republic and quashed separatists.
Two men in civilian clothes attempted to enter the territory of the Chechen Interior Ministry but were stopped by police who asked for identification, Alkhanov said in televised remarks. In response, one of the men approached a policeman and detonated explosives, he said.
The blast killed two police officers and injured several other people, Alkhanov said.
Police identified the bomber as Beslan Chagiyev. Chechen law enforcement officials said they found a 10-minute video recording of Chagiyev calling for the killing of police officers near the Interior Ministry building.
Alkhanov said Chagiyev apparently had been trained outside Chechnya, Interfax reported.
The man accompanying the bomber was also killed in the blast. He was identified as a taxi driver who had driven Chagiyev to the ministry and was not involved in the attack, Alkhanov said.
Alkhanov said the bomber had intended to blow up the ministry building.
Chechen police killed four people suspected of belonging to a Chechen suicide bombing group responsible for ministry attack in separate incidents Friday night, authorities said Saturday.
Repeated calls to the Chechen Interior Ministry's press office went unanswered Friday.
Kadyrov, himself a former insurgent, took a tough line against remaining insurgents Saturday.
"I've decided today that I will never again ask for an amnesty for militants," Kadyrov said, Interfax reported.
He called on all insurgents hiding in forests to surrender or be killed. "There is only one way for them: either turn themselves in to law enforcement agencies and sit out a sentence and live or find themselves 3 meters under the ground," Kadyrov said.
On Friday, Kadyrov praised the officers killed in the attack for their "courage" and for preventing more deaths, according to comments posted on his government's web site.
The officers will be posthumously decorated with medals, while their families will receive compensation, Kadyrov said.
He called on attackers planning bombings to turn themselves in to police. "Otherwise, they will face a very sad ending," Kadyrov said.
Armed insurgents in the North Caucasus have largely refrained from carrying out suicide attacks in recent years, a tactic they employed with great frequency in the first half of this decade.
In September, a suicide bomber attacked the motorcade of Ingush Interior Minister Musa Medov in the Ingush city of Nazran. Medov escaped unharmed, while five bystanders were wounded.
