A car bomb exploded near a military base in Russia’s southern Dagestan region on Sunday, killing the driver of the car, a local official said.

The blast occurred about 100 meters (yards) from a military base in the town of Kaspiysk in the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan, said a spokesman for border guard troops.

“According to provisional information no one died except the driver of the car,” said the spokesman, adding that police were investigating reports the bomb was detonated by a suicide bomber.

Dagestan as well as neighbouring Chechnya and Ingushetia are at the centre of an Islamist insurgency. Militants say they want a sharia-based, pan-Caucasus state independent of Russia, a struggle whose foundations were laid over 250 years ago.

Police have been particularly on high alert for possible attacks on Sunday as Russians celebrated of the 65th anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War Two.

The latest explosion completely destroyed the car, a white Lada, a witness at the scene told Reuters.

In a separate attack, a bomb disposal expert was killed overnight when he came across an explosive device near apartments housing the families of military officials in Kaspiysk, a police spokesman said.

Insurgents from Chechnya have often staged attacks on Victory Day, a holiday associated with the mass deportation of ethnic Chechens by Stalin during the war.

More than 40 people are killed when a bomb tore through a military parade in Kaspiysk on Victory Day in 2002.

Sappers on Sunday neutralised two large bombs in a park in the centre of Makhachkala, Dagestan’s administrative centre, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service said.

(Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Maria Golovnina)