NAZRAN, Russia – An explosion tore through a crowd of mourners at a cemetery in violence-plagued southern Russia on Wednesday, wounding at least 10 people, including four police officers, authorities said.

The funeral was for an ethnic Russian woman who had been fatally shot along with her two grown children Monday in Ingushetia, a mostly Muslim republic, in what authorities said may have been an ethnically motivated attack.

The funeral at the Russian cemetery in the settlement of Ordzhonikidze was halted and the site was cordoned off by police after the explosion, believed to have been caused by a homemade bomb, the district police said.

State-run Channel One television showed dramatic footage of the blast erupting amid a half-dozen mourners walking in the cemetery, throwing some to the ground. People screamed and hid behind low iron fences surrounding graves, and a man lay on the ground reaching out with his bloodied hand.

Police were scouring the area, and ambulances were rushing casualties away.

District hospital and emergency officials said 10 people were injured, including four police officers. The most seriously injured victim had her leg amputated below the knee, the officials said.

Schoolteacher Lyudmila Terekhina, 55, and her 24-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son were found dead in their home, apparently shot in their sleep, officials said. There were no signs of a robbery, they said.

Ingushetia is a poor province adjacent to Chechnya and is afflicted by spillover violence from the war-scarred region _ where militant separatists view Russians as occupiers. Attacks often target government and law enforcement officials.

There also is tension between ethnic Ingush and Ossetians in the province to the west.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)