Kremlin talks tough after Caucasus attack

By Denis Dyomkin

YAROSLAVL, Russia (Reuters) - President Dmitry Medvedev demanded tough action against militants on Friday after a suicide bombing killed at least 18 people, and an insurgent leader called for more attacks outside Russia's Muslim regions.

The remarks from Medvedev and Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov, who spoke in a web-posted video, underscored the confrontation between the Kremlin and Islamist insurgents who say they are determined to bring Russia down.

"We must not stand on ceremony with these bandits: they should be destroyed," Medvedev told Russian and foreign political analysts at a forum in the Russian city of Yaroslavl.

He spoke as mourners in North Ossetia left flowers near police barriers at the gates of a busy market in the provincial capital, Vladikavkaz, where authorities say an attacker set off a powerful bomb packed with bolts and ball bearings on Thursday.

An injured victim died in hospital overnight, a regional Health Ministry official said, bringing the death toll to 18 including the suspected attacker. More than 100 people remained hospitalised, including 11 who were flown to Moscow.

The blast was a new blow to the Kremlin, which is struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, a strip of impoverished, ethnically mixed provinces along predominantly Orthodox Christian Russia's southern border.

Insurgent leader Umarov issued a new call for attacks outside the North Caucasus.

Umarov, filmed sitting on the ground in an unspecified location and wearing camouflage, urged militants to focus on "taking jihad beyond the boundaries of the Caucasus" and other Muslim regions in order to "batter Russia in its den."