[originaltext] Russia was in mourning yesterday for victims of a market bombi

Russia was in mourning yesterday for victims of a market bombing that killed 51 people.
   Shocked residents of this southern provincial capital began to bury their dead.
   President Boris Yeltsin ordered flags flown at half-mast on all official buildings as a sign of respect to shoppers and traders blown apart by a 10-kilogram device which devastated a produce market here on Friday.
   The country also commemorated a separate tragedy concerning 21 patients who perished in a fire at a psychiatric hospital in the Vologda region on Friday, 350 kilometers northeast of Moscow.
   Alexander Dzasokhov, president of North Ossetia, told journalists in Vladikavkaz that he had discussed an on-going investigation into the deadly market explosion via telephone with Yeltsin.
   Dzasokhov later left to attend funerals of some of the 16 victims expected to be buried in Vladikavkaz and surrounding villages in simple family ceremonies.
   Reports had earlier said 19 people were to be buried.
   Russian television showed wailing mourners gathered round one victim’s open coffin, and aired appeals from Vladikavkaz residents for an end to a wave of killings, kidnappings and crime destabilizing the Caucasus region.
   Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin hinted on Saturday that religious extremists could have been responsible for the attack, which has increased tensions in Russia’s troubled northern Caucaus region.