An Interior Ministry spokesman in a volatile province in southern Russia says a suicide bomber has killed a police officer and wounded two others.
Aslan Dzgoyev of the ministry's branch in North Ossetia said the attacker blew himself up at a police checkpoint on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Vladikavkaz. The bomber, who died in the explosion, was accompanied by two other men. One of them was captured after police had shot and wounded him, while the other escaped.
North Ossetia and other regions in Russia's volatile North Caucasus have been plagued by suicide bombings and other violence stemming from two separatist wars in Chechnya and aggravated by widespread complaints of police abuses.
A rebel Chechen leader claimed responsibility for the March subway suicide bombings in Moscow that killed 40 people.