BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

Friday, September 23, 2005 Posted: 0653 GMT (1453 HKT)

Bomb wounds 46 in Belarusian city

MINSK, Belarus (AP) -- A bomb exploded outside a cafe in the Belarusian city of Vitebsk, wounding dozens of people, officials said Friday.

It was the second such attack in Vitebsk in less than two weeks. The motive was not clear.

Forty-six people were wounded, including 25 who were hospitalized, the Emergency Situations Ministry said Friday.

Alexei Murzhankov, a duty officer at the ministry's city department, said four of those were in intensive care.

The Interfax news agency, citing emergency response officials, said the bomb was buried in a flower bed outside the cafe.

A Vitebsk resident, Anton Stepanishchev, said the cafe was a makeshift, open-air structure set up to attract people in the summer and had a dance floor.

On September 15, a beer can stuffed with nails and metal scraps was planted in a flower bed near a bus stop close to a theater. That blast wounded two people.

Police opened a criminal investigation into hooliganism but said at the time they had not ruled out other motives.

Source:

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/09/23/belarus.explosion.ap/