Description & Facts: At least two people are feared dead after a suicide bomber attacked the Chechen parliament Tuesday, Russian state television reported.

Another state news agency, RIA Novosti, said a car carrying militants entered the parliament compound as lawmakers were making their way in. One of them detonated explosives while two others managed to enter the building, the news agency said. A shootout ensued.

Other state news agencies also carried brief accounts of the attack. CNN has not been able to independently confirm the incident.

Rebels in Chechnya have been fighting for independence and it has exacted a heavy toll both inside Russia and in the North Caucasus region where Chechnya is located.

The standard of living in the southwestern republic is poor compared with the rest of Russia. Unemployment is rampant and infant mortality is high.

In addition, the Chechen population of about 1 million is mostly made up of Sunni Muslims, who maintain a distinctly different cultural and linguistic identity from Russian Orthodox Christians.

The conflict dates back nearly 20 years, with Chechens having laid claim to land in the Caucasus Mountains region. Thousands have been killed and 500,000 Chechen people have been displaced from the fighting.

Russian officials suspect Chechen separatists in the deadly bombings that rocked two subway stations in central Moscow in March.

In addition, Chechen rebels held 700 theater-goers hostage in a Moscow theater in 2002.A Russian effort to free them resulted in the deaths of 120 hostages.

They also were accused of downing two Russian airplanes in 2004. And they took over a school in Beslan in the North Ossetia region in 2004. When the siege ended, more than 330 people had died -- half of them children.

In recent years, the insurgency has moved to the east and the west -- to the republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia, where rebels are fighting troops to destabilize the region.
Source: CNN.com