An increasing number of terrorist attacks is one of the main factors behind a rise in Russia's crime rate, Interfax cited the interior ministry as saying Saturday.
Since 1998, "114 acts of terrorism carried out with explosive devices have killed 315 people and injured another 519 in Russia," the head of the ministry's crime investigation department, Lieutenant General Vyacheslav Trubnikov, told the agency.
Most of the attacks occurred in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and the southern regions of Stavropol and the North Caucasus, but Trubnikov pointed to recent successes in foiling such outrages.
"In the current year, interior ministry agencies have prevented 95 terrorist attacks involving the use of explosives, while materials involved in 28 cases had been forwarded to the courts," Trubnikov said.
The Stavropol region is situated near the breakaway North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, where Russian forces have been waging a self-styled "anti-terrorist" campaign against separatist rebels for the past 13 months.
A series of bomb explosions in apartment blocks across Russia in August and September 1999 killed 293 people, and was later cited by the Kremlin as a reason for its military intervention in Chechnya, which began on October 1, 1999 -- MOSCOW (AFP)
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