Seven Russian soldiers were killed when a car exploded at their headquarters in separatist South Ossetia Oct. 3—the Russian army’s first casualties in the region since the end of a five-day war with Georgia in August. “The latest terrorist acts in South Ossetia prove that Georgia has not renounced its policy of state terrorism,” South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity told Russia’s Vesti-24. “We have no doubt that these terrorist acts are the work of Georgian special forces.” The blast came two days before Russian troops began withdrawing from the “buffer zone” in northern Georgia under EU supervision. (AP, Oct. 5; Bloomberg, Oct. 3)