AFP - Seven people died and four others were wounded Sunday in a suicide attack in Russia's turbulent southern mountain region of Chechnya, officials said.
   
Four Chechen police officers as well as a Georgian and a Turkish man died along with the suicide bomber in the capital Grozny, when the attacker detonated a bomb outside a concert hall around 5:00 pm (1300 GMT), Mariam Nalayeva, the spokeswoman for the investigators' office, told AFP.
   
The Turkish national was working in the Caucasus republic's building industry, she said, but did not give details about the other civilian.
   
The identity of the suicide bomber was not immediately known.
   
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said the attack showed a violent campaign waged against Russian rule by Islamist rebels was in its "death throes."
   
The Kremlin-backed leader told news agency Interfax: "It is an attempt to make our forces pull back from the area where a special operation is being carried out, an attempt to make us stop working to destroy the rebels."    
   
"We will not stop until we have eliminated all the rebels who target peaceful citizens, the security forces, the military and members of religious orders."
   
Chechnya has been the site of several bloody attacks since April when Moscow ended its controversial "anti-terror operation" which lasted more than a decade.
   
The North Caucasus republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan, which border Chechnya, are also regularly rocked by militant attacks.