Bomber dressed as policeman kills 12 in new Russian attack

A suicide bomber struck in Russia again today in an attack which left 12 dead, including nine police officers, in the volatile region of Dagestan.

Dressed in a police uniform, the man blew himself up as officers investigated a car bomb blast 20 minutes earlier near a school.

The deaths came two days after so-called Black Widow suicide bombers killed 39 on the metro in Moscow. At least 23 people were wounded in the town of Kizlyar in Dagestan, which borders war-ravaged Chechnya. The local police chief was among the dead.

Moscow's media have questioned the Kremlin's claim to have crushed the Islamic separatist insurgency stemming from the country's southern regions in the Caucasus Mountains.

Meanwhile, the hunt for the masterminds of the Moscow metro attacks began a bitter diplomatic row today as Russia's most senior secret services official claimed Georgia could have played a covert role.

The sensational charge — angrily rejected by Tbilisi which was at war with Moscow in 2008 over two disputed regions — came as the first funerals of the metro victims were today being held in the Russian capital.

Nikolay Patrushev, head of the Kremlin's Security Council, said: "We had information that individual employees of the Georgian secret services are maintaining contact with terrorist organisations in the Russian North Caucasus. We should check this theory as well concerning the terrorist acts in Moscow."

A bomb concealed on a bicycle killed at least eight people and wounded 35 in southern Afghanistan today. It went off in the Nahr-e-Sarraj district north of Lashkar Gah as people gathered to receive free vegetable seeds provided by Britain to encourage them not to plant opium poppy.

It came as the Pentagon's top military officer said Nato forces hope to reverse the Taliban's momentum in the south with an offensive in Kandahar.