Double Car Bombings Kills Four in Dagestan

There has been a report of a double car bomb explosion in Makhachkala, capital of Russian’s Dagestan Republic, killing at least four and injuring over forty people just outside the headquarters of the court bailiff’s service.

According to Interfax news agency reports, the first car bomb went off on Monday in front of the Justice ministry, but no fatalities were reported. Just as the police arrived at the scene, a second car bomb detonated, Interfax reported, citing local investigative committee.

Although, there were conflicting reports about the number of casualties with initial reports suggesting 8 deaths, law enforcement officials have put the death toll at three people, with dozens injured in the second attack.

According to the local Interior Ministry, the majority of injured were police officers who arrived at the scene after the first blast, adding that there were about 15 of them in the hospital.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but investigators are already working on tracking down suspects using registration plates of one of the vehicles involved.

An ethnically mixed region comprising mostly of Muslims, Dagestan has been a province with the highest rate of violence in the Northern Caucasus. The violence, which was due to insurgency, has led to the deaths of at least 400 people according to a website monitoring events occurring in the region.

Bangladesh Factory Fire Kills 8 People in Dhaka

Only two weeks after more than 900 people died in an eight-storey factory collapse, police say a garment factory fire in an industrial district in Dhaka has killed at least 8 people on Wednesday night.

The fire, which swept through a factory belonging to the Tung Hal Group, a large garment exporter, occurred in the Mirpur area of the Bangladeshi capital overnight.

“It was a big fire but we managed to confine it on one floor,” Mahbubur Rahman, operations director of Bangladesh’s fire service, told AFP news agency.

He added that the victims had suffocated after rushing to a stairwell, and being overwhelmed by “toxic smoke from burnt acrylic clothing”.

Among the victims who died of suffocation was the owner of the factory, who was said to be holding a meeting in the 11-storey building. But the police and fire officials reported that that there was no worker amongst the victims as there was no overnight production.

President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufcaturers and Exporters Association, Mohammed Atiqul Islam, told Reuters news agency, “It is not clear to us how the accident happened, but we are trying to find out the cause.”

Only on Wednesday, the government announced that it had shut down 18 garment factories for safety reasons following the April 24 Rana Plaza collapse, the worst garment manufacturing disaster in the world that has seen the deaths of over 900 people.