A powerful bomb ripped through a passenger bus Wednesday morning in a central Russian city, killing eight people and injuring more than 50, officials said, according to AP. Investigators were trying to determine whether the explosive device had been carried by a passenger or planted somewhere inside or beneath the bus in the Volga River city of Togliatti. Yuri Rozhin, the head of a local branch of Russia's Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, said in a televised statement that the bomb could have been detonated by a suicide attacker. With nearly a month remaining before parliamentary elections, the blast raised fears of similar violence that has occurred before other elections in the past. «Due to (the blast's) character, its consequences, the main version being considered is a terrorist attack,» Rozhin said. But officials said that other versions were also being considered. «A terror attack is a likely theory, but not the main one,» Alexander Konovalov, Putin's envoy to the Volga River region, said, according to the Interfax news agency. He said that the investigators were also looking at careless handling of explosives or a turf battle between criminal clans as possible explanations.
