A female suicide bomber blew herself up on Wednesday in an attack on a police car in the main street of Chechnya's capital Grozny. News agencies reported that six people were wounded.

"The woman went up to a traffic police car in which there were several people and detonated her explosives," Chechnya's deputy health minister Rukman Bartiyev told the ITAR-TASS news agency.

"The number of victims and wounded is being specified," he added.

The charred remains of the woman's head and other body parts were found at the scene, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia has fought two wars against Chechen separatists since the early 1990s. A series of attacks in recent months on security forces and local leaders, including aid workers, has shattered several years of relative calm that followed those wars.

In August, suicide bombers on bicycles killed four policemen in the the capital of the North Caucasus republic.

Leaders from across the North Caucasus warned Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month that they were struggling to contain an Islamic insurgency that they said had permeated all spheres of society.

smh/AP/AFPE/Reuters
Editor: Trinity Hartman