Nearly 20 people were killed and more than 70 others injured when a truck packed with explosives rammed through the security gates at police station in Ingushetia,southern Russia.

The bombing is the latest attack in the mainly Muslim region, which has seen an upsurge in violence in the past few months.

As officers gathered for a morning check on Monday in Nazran, the main city in Ingushetia,this blast occurred when a truck broke through security gates at police headquarters ,Russian agencies reported.

The law-enforcement source has reported saying that “Practically all the cars and buildings in the yard of the police headquarters were completely destroyed,”

Officials said, Local civilians and police officials have been wounded and killed as a result of the explosion.

At least nine children were said to be among the wounded, Svetlana Gorbakova of the regional branch of the Russian prosecutor general’s office said.

Kremlin authorities have largely blamed muslim fighters for recent violence in the region, which lies in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus.

Shaun Walker, Moscow correspondent for the UK’s Independent newspaper, told that attacks in the region appeared to be becoming more frequent.

“Although there is a lot of violence in this region on a regular basis, it’s still relatively unusual to have suicide bombings and a bombing of this scale,” he said

“These attacks have been happening with alarming regularity. What we’ve seen in the last week or so is a series of slightly larger scale attacks. Taken overall it is a really quite a scary picture for Russia and the leaders of these republics.

“In a sense it does seem a little bit like the Caucasus is spiralling out of control.”

Last week, the region’s construction minister, Ruslan Amerkhanov, was shot dead inside his office.

In June Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, Ingushetia’s president, was injured badly after a suicide bomber attacked his car.

Yevkurov, who is due to return to work in the next several days, said Monday’s attack was an attempt to destabilise the region, and blamed the West for fomenting unrest in the North Caucasus.

“I am miles from believing that Arabs are behind this. There are other, more serious forces there… We understand whose interests these are: the United States, Britain, and Israel too,” he told the Russian News Service (RSN) radio.

“The West will keep seeking to prevent Russia from reviving the former Soviet might,” he added.

In the North Caucasus region, Moscow has long struggled to impose the Kremlin’s authority which has been the site of two deadly wars in Chechnya and hundreds of violent attacks since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

While large-scale fighting in Chechnya, Ingushetia’s neighbour, has ended, conflicts continue to mount grievous attacks and skirmishes.