Six killed in Moscow blast

A terrorist attack in the heart of Moscow, Russia, on Tuesday killed six people, including a female suicide bomber, and injured 13.

Officials said the attack could have been aimed at the parliament house.

The blast outside the luxury National Hotel, which faces the Kremlin and parliament house, killed four persons immediately while the other two died on the way to hospital.

Most of those injured were college students.

Police said the bomb went off at 1053 local time (1223 IST) next to a Mercedes. The headless body of the bomber was found sprawled near the car.

The device, filled with steel balls, was tied to the bomber's waist.

A Federal Security Service bomb disposal squad later defused an unexploded part of the bomb with the help of a remote-controlled robot, police said.

Earlier, there was speculation that there could be a mafia hand as the hotel houses the offices of many companies.

"Now we can say with full confidence that it was a terrorist act," Sergei Tsoi, press secretary of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS news agency.

"The National Hotel was not the place where the suicide bomber had planned to stage the explosion," Mayor Luzhkov told Interfax news agency, adding the bomber had asked a passer-by the way to the parliament house.

The police launched a hunt for a Caucasian woman, who could have been the organiser of the blast and carrying an explosive belt on her, Mayak radio said.

The attack came a day after parties supporting President Vladimir Putin won elections to the lower house of parliament, Duma, voting for which was held over the weekend amidst tight security.

Putin said the attack was targeted "against the market economy development, against democracy and preservation of the country's territorial integrity".

Thirty-one people were killed and 80 injured when a suicide woman bomber blew herself in a moving train in southern Russia near the war-torn republic of Chechnya on December 5.