Three soldiers killed and 32 wounded in car bomb attack in Russia

Buinaksk: A suicide car-bomber killed three soldiers and wounded 32 others in an attack on a military base in Russia's violence-plagued republic of Dagestan on Sunday, officials said.

A spokesman for the republic's Interior Ministry said the attack took place about 1 a.m. on Sunday (2100 GMT Saturday) at the base in the city of Buinaksk.

The ministry said the driver of the explosives-laden small Zhiguli vehicle smashed through a gate of the base and headed for an area where soldiers are quartered in tents.

But soldiers opened fire on him before he reached the centre of the base.

The driver rammed the car into a military truck where it exploded.

After the blast, a roadside bomb hit a car taking investigators to the scene, but there were no injuries reported in that explosion.

Dagestan's president, Magomedsalam Magomedov, visited the scene of the attack and the wounded soldiers in the hospitals where they're being treated.

Dagestan is gripped by near-daily violence between police and soldiers and insurgents believed to be inspired by separatists in neighbouring Chechnya.

The attack came almost exactly 11 years after a car bomb outside an apartment building in Buinaksk housing the families of military officers killed 64 people.