The deadly bombings of the past year -- and a Chechen rebel hostage-taking raid on a Moscow theater in October last year -- have exposed the inability of Russian authorities to protect against suicide attacks.
A suicide truck-bomb attack last December destroyed the headquarters of Chechnya's Moscow-backed government and killed 72 people, and another killed 60 at a government compound in the region in May. Later that month, a woman blew herself up at a religious ceremony, killing at least 18 people.
In June, a female suicide attacker detonated a bomb near a bus carrying soldiers and civilians to a military airfield in Mozdok, a major staging point for Russian troops in Chechnya, killing at least 16 people, and the 50 killed in a truck-bomb attack on a military hospital in Mozdok in August included soldiers wounded in Chechnya.
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