34 lives lost in Russia Victory Day explosion

An explosion ripped through a Victory Day parade in Southern Russia on Thursday killing 34 people, including 12 children, and President Vla...

An explosion ripped through a Victory Day parade in Southern Russia on Thursday killing 34 people, including 12 children, and President Vladimir Putin described the attackers as ‘‘scum’’ who should be treated like Nazis.

He blamed the landmine attack on terrorists, the usual Kremlin term to describe separatist rebels in Chechnya, which borders the province of Dagestan where Thursday’s attack took place.

‘‘This crime was carried out by scum who hold nothing sacred,’’ a solemn Putin told a Kremlin gathering after the main parade in Moscow’s Red Square to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany 57 years ago. ‘‘We have every right to treat them as Nazis, whose sole aim was to spread death, sow fear and to murder,’’ he said.

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News agencies and local television quoted police as saying 25 people were killed in the attack. Police also said more than 100 were hurt, 50 of them seriously, in the blast — the bloodiest since a series of bombings in the southern Russian town of Mineralnye Vody in March 2001 killed 23 people.

Pictures broadcast by the private NTV channel showed wrecked drums and musical instruments scattered across a blood covered street in Kaspiisk, a town some 20 km south of the Dagestan capital.

Its correspondent said the band was on foot, not in a bus as initial reports suggested, and surrounded by crowds of children and World War 11 veterans when the blast erupted. ‘‘The scene is horrifying. There are body parts everywhere and an overpowering smell of blood,’’ Gusarev said. The blast came just before Putin addressed the traditional Victory Day parade outside the Kremlin. (Reuters)