Moscow: At least 11 civilians were killed on September 17 and dozens more severely injured in a landmine blast near a packed market of the Chechen capital Grozny in one of the worst bombings to hit the war-ravaged republic in months.

Russian media reports said that two children were among the victims and that several of the injured were in critical condition. Body parts were strewn 15 metres from the site, the reports said.

The blast occurred when a bus passed by a remote-controlled landmine, a weapon favored by the Chechen rebels in the course of the brutal-three year war in the North Caucasus.

ORT television reported the blast went off shortly after two Russian armored personnel carriers had driven by and appeared to have been aimed against the federal troops.

But most of the victims turned out to be passengers on a municipal bus which was also driving past, said a senior official at the pro-Russian Chechen interior ministry, Colonel Said-Selim Peshkhoyev.

Russian officials quickly pinned the blame for the attack on Chechen rebels. "There is no doubt that the people who perpetrated this inhumane act were Chechen guerrillas," a spokesman for the Russian military in the North Caucasus told the ITAR-TASS news agency.

"They are trying destabilise the situation in Grozny and Chechnya as a whole through this brutal act," the unnamed spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the head of the pro-Russian administration in Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, blamed federal forces for failing to avert the strike through lack of policing in Grozny.

"Impunity encourages gangsters to commit new monstrous crimes in which dozens of lives are lost," Kadyrov told the Interfax news agency.

But the Chechen guerrillas denied responsibility for the incident, with a spokesman for separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov suggesting it may have been a provocation by Russian troops meant to tarnish the fighters' reputation.

"This is another terrorist strike by the Russian secret services against innocent civilians aimed at making the Chechen resistance look bad," said Maskhadov spokesman Mayerbek Vachagayev.