An explosion tore through a morning commuter train near Russia's rebel Chechnya Friday, two days before a national parliamentary election, killing 32 people in what appeared to be a suicide bomb attack, police said.  

The Interior Ministry, denouncing the attack as a "terrorist act," said a woman appeared to have detonated the explosion which sliced the train's second carriage in two.

The Emergencies Ministry put the death toll at 32, including four people who died in hospital, and said at least 50 people had been injured.

The blast took place just outside the town of Kislovodsk in the Stavropol region to the north of Chechnya where separatists have been battling Russian forces for more than a decade.

It was the second such attack in three months on the same line linking two spa towns in Russia's southern fringe.

"According to our preliminary version, the explosive was detonated by an unknown woman," an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

The December 7 election is expected to increase support for political allies of President Vladimir Putin who has taken a hard line against Chechen separatists.

The most extreme wing of the Chechen rebels has resorted to suicide bombings generally carried out by women. Dozens of people have died in attacks both in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia.

In September, an explosion ripped through an early morning commuter train in the Stavropol region, killing six people, but police said at the time this was not the work of Chechen rebels.

(China Daily December 5, 2003)