Car bombing wounds 23 in Russia's south

A car bomb exploded outside a cafe in southern Russia on Tuesday, injuring 23 people, police said. The explosion occurred just outside the cafe in downtown Pyatigorsk, a city in Russia's North Caucasus, said Stanislav Belyayev, a spokesman for the Stavropol regional police. The wounded were cafe customers and passers-by, and all were hospitalized, three of them in serious condition. Belyayev said a powerful homemade explosive blew up in a Russian-made Lada, which was parked outside the cafe. Investigators were treating it as a terrorist attack. Bombings and other attacks occur regularly in the North Caucasus, where violence has spread following two separatist wars in Chechnya. While most attacks are carried out by militants targeting police and other officials, some are the result of business disputes.