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© Video still from RT broadcast
Four police officers have been killed and another three sustained injuries in Russia's Republic of Chechnya as they attempted to detain a suspected suicide bomber. The young man detonated improvised explosive when police attempted to search him.

The incident happened ahead of a concert dedicated to City Day. According to the Internal Affairs Ministry, police forces noticed a suspicious man outside a concert hall.

"Police officers who were manning metal detectors at the entrance of the concert hall noticed a suspicious young man. When the police officers decided to check the individual, the man blew himself up," a local police officer told RIA news agency.

Arriving at the scene, the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said the suicide bomber approached security forces and introduced himself as "a law enforcement staffer." Police still proceeded to search him, Kadyrov added.

There were no immediate reports of civilian deaths or injuries, the Ministry said.

Despite local media initially claiming the suicide bomber survived, Russia's National Anti-Terror Committee said the man died along with the victims of the blast. Police identified him as a local citizen, who appears to have left home two months ago.

Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev has ordered to posthumously award the four police officers who "have stopped a terrorist and did not let him come to a place, where a public event was to be held."

The area around the concert hall in the city of Grozny, which is home to over 280,000 people, most of them Chechens, is still cordoned off. Two criminal cases were launched following the blast.


Russia's southern Republic of Chechnya, along with neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia, has been facing the continuous threat of terrorism against the civilian population.

In April 2009, Russia announced the end of its decade-long counter-terrorism operation against militants in Chechnya. However, sporadic terrorist attacks inside the region and beyond continue.

In recent years the epicenter of violence has shifted from Chechnya to Russia's other mainly-Muslim North Caucasian republics of Ingushetia, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria.