Two were killed and six injured in a car blast Tuesday evening in a southern Russian city, the Russian Ministry for Civil Defense and Emergencies said.  

The explosion, equivalent to 200 grams of TNT, went off at 5:15 pm Moscow time (1415 GMT) near the central marketplace of Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia, which borders Russia's restive republic of Chechnya to the west.

A female passerby was killed on the spot and a cadet of a police school died later in hospital. The injured included several soldiers of the Russian Interior Troops, Itar-Tass News Agency reported.

An officer with the Prosecutor General's Office described the blast as a terrorist act, citing preliminary information that a bomb had been planted in a car parked near a secondary school and a governmental office building.

The perpetrators of the bombing have not been found yet, but criminal proceedings have started in relation to the explosion on charges of terrorism and murder, the official said.

Interior Ministry spokesman Col.Vasily Panchenkov noted that the explosion occurred when a convoy of two trucks carrying cadets from the Interior Forces' was passing by and he did not rule out that the convoy could have been the target of the blast, Interfax News Agency reported.

Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko said earlier that besides a terrorist attack, a gas cylinder blast could be a possible reason for the car explosion.

(Xinhua News Agency February 4, 2004)