MOSCOW — A suspected rebel bomb blast killed six policemen in Chechnya on Wednesday, denting official claims of a return to normalcy in the renegade republic as its pro-Moscow government met in its new offices for the first time.
The dawn blast flattened part of a building used by an interior ministry organized-crime unit in Chechnya's second-largest city, Gudermes. Television pictures showed one wing of the building reduced to a mass of bricks and splintered planks.
An aide to Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's top spokesman on Chechnya, confirmed that six people had been killed. Five others were seriously wounded in the attack and taken to a hospital, officials said.
Senior officials had earlier denied any deaths, saying that four people had been pulled alive from the rubble.
The aide said a second device, containing about 260 pounds of explosives, was found in the Chechen capital, Grozny. It was rendered safe by bomb disposal experts.
According to Chechnya's prosecutor, Viktor Dakhnov, all the dead were ethnic Chechen police officers, and one body remained buried under the rubble. He said criminal proceedings had been launched on charges of terrorism.
The blast, blamed on separatist guerrillas, appeared designed to puncture authorities' portrayal of a return to normalcy following Monday's move by Chechnya's local pro-Moscow administration to a refurbished furniture factory in Grozny.
The officials had been based in Gudermes since the fall of 1999, when Russia's second offensive in the region got underway.
An official in the Pro-Russian administration of Chechen Prime Minister Stanislav Ilyasov told the Interfax news agency that the government's meeting Wednesday showed that "the situation in the republic is changing for the better as authorities have now returned to the Chechen capital."
Officials said the meeting would examine reconstruction, crop sowing and full restoration of rail services following the first train journey this week from Chechnya to Moscow in two years.
Meanwhile, Russian media reported two mine explosions and an exchange of gunfire in Argun, east of Grozny, and said six Chechen fighters had been captured in the west of the region, including two field commanders.
Russian authorities have been at pains in recent weeks to point to what they say is a return to normal life in Chechnya, with schools reopening and services resuming nearly 20 months into Russia's second military offensive in the region.
