STAVROPOL, Russia, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Two powerful bombs, including one attached to a dead body, were defused in a city near Russia's troubled Northern Caucus region, authorities said Thursday.
The bomb attached to a dead man's body was found inside a car parked near a cafe in Stavropol, a southwestern city whose population includes refugees escaping the strife and instability of the Russian border regions and Caucasus nations.
The mostly Muslim North Caucus provinces have been troubled by an Islamic insurgency.
Police cordoned off the area around the car and police defused the bomb, containing about 130 pounds of explosives, with the help from a robotic arm, the ITAR-Tass government news agency said.
Police identified the dead man only as 43-year-old local resident Gennady Tolbotov.
Police later found and defused another bomb nearby that had been disguised to look like a pile of garbage, authorities said.
If the bombs had exploded, they would have created "a major act of terror," the National Anti-Terrorist Committee said.
On May 26 a homemade bomb in Stavropol went off outside the city's Palace of Culture and Sport 15 minutes before a concert of a Chechen dance company, killing eight people and injuring more than 40.
Thursday's bombs were found a day before the 11th anniversary of Russian troops entering Chechnya to stop a movement to create an independent Islamic state there and in neighboring Dagestan, leading to an eight-month war known as the War in the North Caucasus.
The war, which killed an estimated 61,000 people, mostly Chechen civilians, ended after the Russian army captured the Chechen capital, Grozny, in 2000.
