| An unidentified man was killed Sunday when he blew himself up outside a polling station here during critical presidential elections in Chechnya, local authorities said. A spokesman for the Chechen electoral commission said the man was carrying a suspect package outside the voting station in the Zavodskoi district of the Chechen capital when he was stopped by police for a routine security check. "The security services wanted to check on what he had in the package, but he started to run away from them and then blew himself up," the spokesman, Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov said. "He died. That's all. There was no panic and the voting continues," Arsakhanov said. His version was confirmed by other local officials, and Russian television broadcast video of the site of the attack showing a large pool of blood on a street outside the voting station. No other casualties were reported. The incident occurred around three hours after polling stations throughout the war-torn Muslim republic opened for the start of a vote that was expected to crown a Kremlin-backed candidate as the new Chechen leader. The vote was called to elect a successor for Akhmad Kadyrov, the former pro-Moscow Chechen leader who was slain in a bomb attack in Grozny last May. |