A Russian general was killed by a car bomb on Friday, Russia’s top criminal investigation agency said, in the second such attack on a top Russian military officer in four months.

The Investigative Committee said that Lt Gen Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy head of the main operational department in the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, was killed by an explosive device placed in his car in Balashikha, just outside Moscow, reports AP.

The committee's spokesperson, Svetlana Petrenko, said that the explosive device was rigged with shrapnel. She said that investigators were at the scene.

Russian media ran videos of a vehicle burning in the courtyard of an apartment building. The committee did not mention possible suspects.

Trump says Zelenskyy is prolonging war in Ukraine by resisting calls to cede Crimea to Russia

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova described Moskalik's killing as a “terror attack.”

The attack follows the killing of Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, who died on December 17 when a bomb hidden on an electric scooter parked outside his apartment building exploded as he left for his office.

The Russian authorities blamed Ukraine for the killing of Kirillov, and Ukraine's security agency acknowledged that it was behind that attack.

Kirillov was the chief of Russia’s Radiation, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, the special troops tasked with protecting the military from the enemy’s use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and ensuring operations in a contaminated environment. Kirillov’s assistant also died in the attack.

Friday's bombing came just as US President Donald Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, was expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss a US-brokered peace plan for Ukraine. The meeting is their fourth encounter since February.

MSH

At least 34 people, including two babies were killed when a contraband fuel depot exploded into flames in southern Benin near the border with Nigeria on Saturday.

According to Beninese Interior Minister Alassane Seidou, “a serious fire occurred in the town of Seme Podji. Another 20 people were seriously wounded in the incident.”

"I can't really give you the cause of the fire, but there is a large gasoline warehouse here and cars, tricycles and motorcycles come from morning to evening,” he added.

Nigeria is a main oil and gas producer where fuel smuggling is very common along its borders, particularly when the government maintains a subsidy to keep fuel prices low.

The majority of the victims were burnt and they could not be not be identified.

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