AT LEAST 15 people have been killed, and at least 87 more hospitalised, after an apparent suicide bombing outside a crowded central market in the Russian Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz.

The explosion occurred in a lane near the market in the North Ossetian city centre at around noon, while the area is thronged with shoppers, as well as people queueing at a nearby job centre. More than 130 were wounded.

Officials have said that the attack was the work of a suicide bomber sat in a car.

Reports suggested the bombing created carnage around the market, with several cars reduced to wreckage by the blast, and charred corpses laid out on stretchers. The attack was in an area plagued by an Islamist-inspired insurgency.

Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has sent a regional envoy to the city to help co-ordinate relief efforts, while prime minister Vladimir Putin said the crime was aimed at “sowing emnity between our citizens. We mustn’t allow this.”

Vladikavkaz was the scene of the 2004 Beslan school massacre which left 330 people dead.

Its market has been bombed repeatedly in the past: in 1999, when 55 people died, in 2001 when six were killed, and in 2004 when a further 11 died.