Russian leader says to "eliminate" cafe attackers

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev promised on Thursday to "eliminate" those behind this week’s car bomb in the volatile North Caucasus region.

The attack dealt a blow to Kremlin efforts to contain a spreading Islamist insurgency in the mainly Muslim region plagued by corruption, poverty and the ideology of global jihad.

Visiting the city of Pyatigorsk, where a car bomb ripped through a cafe wounding 30 people on Tuesday, Medvedev used tougher language than usual to denounce the attack.

“The organisers must meet the punishment they deserve,” he told officials before visiting the wounded in hospitals. “If they put up resistance, they must be eliminated.” Medvedev’s remarks resembled a tougher line usually pursued by Russia’s powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who once said that Chechen rebels must be “rubbed out in the outhouse”.

In a separate attack also on Tuesday this week, a suicide bomber killed a policeman in the nearby region of North Ossetia.

Both attacks occurred in mainly Christian provinces where violence linked to the insurgency is less frequent than in mainly Muslim Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia.

Analysts say the violence is spreading out of its traditional epicentre of violence. Particularly alarming for the Kremlin is the regions’ proximity to Sochi on the Black Sea, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

On Thursday unidentified assailants shot dead at least one policeman in Kabardino-Balkaria, another province in the North Caucasus, Interfax news agency reported.