Daghestan Car Bomb Wounds Official, Kills Driver

A senior official in Russia's North Caucasus has been injured and his driver killed in a bomb explosion.

The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor-General's Office said that Bekmurza Bekmurzayev, a minister in charge of national, religious, and foreign affairs in Daghestan, was taken to the hospital suffering from shock.

It said that "unknown assailants detonated explosives under his car."

Two of the minister's bodyguards injured in the attack were also hospitalized.

Daghestan, an ethnically mixed, mainly Muslim republic on the Caspian Sea, has overtaken other volatile areas in the North Caucasus to become the worst-hit by Islamist and criminal violence in recent months.

compiled from agency reports