Three people died and 27 others were wounded in a double suicide bombing outside police posts late yesterday in the mountain village of Gubden in the violence-torn region of Dagestan.
Investigators today identified the first bomber as Marina Khorosheva -- a woman who has been repeatedly linked to a failed plan for a major suicide attack by Islamist militants in Moscow on December 31.
"According to preliminary information, a study of the body fragments showed that one of the terrorist-bomber was visually identified as Marina Khorosheva," the investigative committee said in a statement.
The December 31 plot failed when the suicide bomber accidentally set off her charge inside her guest house in Moscow. But it was then followed by a January 24 attack at Domodedovo airport that killed 36 people.
Khorosheva and her husband Vitaly Razdobudko -- also wanted by the police -- had aroused intense media interest as they are ethnic Russian Orthodox Christians who converted to Islam and became part of the militant underworld.
Razdobudko had been dubbed in the press as the "Russian Wahhabi" because of his embrace of extreme Sunni Islam.
News agencies said that initial evidence suggested that Razdobudko could have been the driver involved in the second bombing in Gubden.
"For now, this is nothing more than speculation because the suicide bomber's body was blown to bits," Interfax quoted one local police source as saying."We have sent the DNA samples to a Stavropol lab (in southern Russia), where it will be carefully analysed," said the official