Double car bomb explosion killed four and injured at least 46 as blasts struck outside the headquarters of the court bailiffs' service in the capital of Russia’s Dagestan Republic, Makhachkala. 
 
 The first car with the explosive placed underneath reportedly went off causing no fatalities or injuries. Once law enforcement arrived at the scene, the second bomb detonated, Interfax reported citing the local Investigative Committee. 
 
 “As far as I know there are three people dead. One of them is our employee,” spokesperson of the Court Bailiffs' Service Magomed Buttaev told RT. 
 
 The death toll rose to four people after another man, an employee of the court bailiffs' service, died of his injuries in hospital, according an Interior Ministry spokesman. 
 
 
 
 Initial reports suggested eight people died at the scene, Interfax news agency reported. 
 
 “Two cars were detonated within several minutes. At least eight people have been killed, while the number of injured is being clarified. More than 20 cars have been damaged,” the agency quoted the representative of Dagestan’s Investigative Committee. 
 
 
 
 However, the chief physician in Dagestan, Kazanfar Kurbanov, has later confirmed that three people died and 24 were injured. 
 
 “There have been 46 people hospitalized,” Interfax reported citing its source. 
 
 
 
 As said, the blasts occurred approximately 15 minutes apart from each other with the two bombs were detonated remotely. 
 
 
 
 Interfax quotes a source who said that an explosive was also found in a trash can. 
 
 
 
 “It has already been established that the first explosive was placed under the car,” one of the spokesman told media. 
 
 The force of the second blast was the equivalent of up to 50 kg of TNT, Rasul Temirbekov from the local Investigative committee told ITAR-TASS, adding that the first blast was less powerful, nearly causing damage to nearby parked cars. 
 
 
 
 According to law enforcement officials, perpetrators clearly used a tactic which is quite common in Dagestan, when the first blast is bait to attract more people and the second explosion goes off when people are at the scene, thus injuring and killing law enforcement members. 
 
 “The majority of injured are police officers who arrived at the scene after the first blast. There are at least 15 of them now,” ITAR-TASS quotes the local Interior Ministry. 
 
 Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has sent doctors and psychologists from Moscow to Makhachkala. The IL-76 jet will deliver 26 specialists to Dagestan, and then return with victims of the blast to Moscow hospitals if needed. 
 
 No one has claimed responsibility for the double blast, with no suspects yet identified. Investigators have said they will use the registration plates of one of the vehicles involved, in a bid to track down the culprits. 
 
 
 
 “We plan to ID the owner of the exploded car and unravel the case trough this information,” an investigative committee spokesperson said. There's a belief that the car was stolen. 
 
 
 
 In a recent incident near a shopping center on May 1, two teenagers were killed and another two injured as they tried to uncover the dangerous object, wrapped up either in a box or a bag. ||||| Police and investigators work at the scene of a blast in Makhachkala May 20, 2013. 
 
 Police and investigators work at the site of a blast in Makhachkala May 20, 2013. 
 
 Police and investigators work at the site of a blast in Makhachkala May 20, 2013. 
 
 MAKHACHKALA, Russia Two car bombs killed at least four people and wounded dozens of others on Monday in one of the bloodiest attacks this year in Dagestan, a turbulent province in Russia's North Caucasus region where armed groups are waging an Islamist insurgency. 
 
 Car bombs, suicide bombings and firefights are common in Dagestan, at the center of an insurgency rooted in two post-Soviet wars against separatist rebels in neighboring Chechnya. 
 
 Such attacks are rare in other parts of Russia, but in a separate incident in a suburb of Moscow on Monday, security forces killed two suspected militants alleged to have been plotting an attack in the capital and arrested a third suspect after a gunbattle. 
 
 One elite police officer was lightly wounded in the exchange of gunfire with the suspects - Russian citizens but trained in Afghanistan or Pakistan - who had holed up in a home in the town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo east of Moscow, authorities said. 
 
 Investigators initially said eight people had been killed by the successive blasts in Dagestan's provincial capital Makhachkala, but law enforcement and health officials later put the death toll at four and said about 40 people were wounded. 
 
 The explosions occurred with the space of a few minutes near the headquarters of the court bailiffs' service and appeared to have been detonated by remote control, said the federal Investigative Committee, a Russian state agency. 
 
 Twisted wreckage of a car could be seen near the building, which was cordoned off by police, and blackened chunks of metal lay in the street. 
 
 The Health Ministry said 35 people remained in hospital, including one child, a few hours after the blasts, which the Investigative Committee called a "terrorist act". 
 
 The main suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings in the United States, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lived in Dagestan with his family about a decade ago and visited the region last year. 
 
 The visit by Tsarnaev, who was shot dead by U.S. police after the April 15 bombings that killed three people and wounded 264 others, is being scrutinized by U.S. investigators for signs of ties with insurgents. 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered law enforcement authorities to ensure insurgents do not attack the 2014 Winter Olympics next February in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, which is close to the North Caucasus. 
 
 All those wounded or killed were apparently caught by the second of Monday's explosions, a few minutes after the first, the investigators said. 
 
 Insurgents in the North Caucasus have often sought to increase casualties by setting off an initial blast to attract law enforcement officers and then detonating a second bomb. 
 
 Dagestan, an ethnically mixed, mostly Muslim region between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, has become the most violent province in the North Caucasus, where insurgents say they are fighting to carve out an Islamic state out of southern Russia. 
 
 At least 405 people were killed in Dagestan in violence linked to the insurgency last year, according to the Caucasian Knot website, which tracks developments in the region. 
 
 Putin launched the second war in Chechnya as prime minister in 1999 and likes to take credit for preventing the region from splitting from Russia. But his 13 years in power have been marred by deadly attacks claimed by or blamed on the insurgents. 
 
 (Writing by Steve Gutterman; editing by Timothy Heritage and Jon Hemming) ||||| Makhachkala, Dagestan (CNN) -- At least four people are dead and 44 are injured after two bombs exploded Monday in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region, the Ministry of Health's website says. 
 
 Thirty-one of the injured were hospitalized, it says. 
 
 The incident -- which occurred in Makhachkala, capital of the semi-autonomous republic of Dagestan -- also caused significant damage. Security officials say they believe law enforcement officers may have been the target because the explosion occurred outside a local marshal's building. 
 
 One car bomb was discovered by a police patrol, who called in a unit to defuse it. Before that could be done, the bomb went off, but the explosion was minor, security officials said. Then, as a crowd of people gathered, a second, more powerful device detonated, causing the casualties. 
 
 An Islamic insurgency has taken hold in the North Caucasus and there is a strong presence of Islamic militants fighting Moscow's rule. 
 
 READ MORE: Dagestan violence kills at least 5 
 
 Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev -- the suspects in the Boston Marathon terror attack last month -- had ties with the region. The brothers are ethnic Chechens who lived in Kyrgyzstan and Dagestan. 
 
 Authorities who've been investigating how the brothers became radicalized are interested in a trip Tamerlan Tsarnaev took to Dagestan last year. 
 
 Russian authorities asked U.S. officials to investigate Tsarnaev before the trip, saying they believed he was becoming increasingly involved with radical Islam. The FBI investigated, but found no evidence of extremist activity, FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee. 
 
 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in custody. His older brother died after a shootout with police just outside Boston days after the bombing. 
 
 READ MORE: Keys to Boston attack could lie half a world away in restive region of Russia 
 
 Russia has been on edge over militant activity and its security forces announced on Monday that they foiled a terror attack planned for Moscow. 
 
 A spokesman at the National Anti-Terror Committee said security forces killed two militants and detained another. All three are described as Russian citizens trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said. Security forces conducted their operation in the Orekhovo-Zuevo region of the Moscow suburbs. 
 
 "They were planning a terror attack in Moscow," the spokesman said. 
 
 No civilians were injured during the operation, but one Federal Security Service officer was wounded, state news agency Ria Novosti reported, citing an unnamed security source. The source said the attack was planned for central Moscow. 
 
 Former Chechen rebel: 'I have nothing to do with' Boston bombings 
 
 CNN's Alla Eschenko contributed to this report
– A powerful explosion killed three people and wounded 40 more today in Dagestan, the region that was once home to Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, reports Reuters. Police had found a bomb in a car outside a law enforcement building in the region's capital city of Makhachkala, and were in the process of disarming it when a second one blew up, CNN reports. Russia Today has a slightly different account, saying the first bomb blew up, but didn't hurt anyone. It wasn't Russia's only brush with terrorism today either; authorities today announced that they'd foiled an attack on Moscow, killing two Russian citizens that they alleged were militants "trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan." The two were reportedly killed in a shootout at a home in a suburb east of Moscow.