An explosion hit a minibus unloading passengers in the capital of Russia's North Ossetia province on Thursday, killing eleven people.

A duty officer at the Emergency Situations Ministry in North Ossetia, who was not authorised to give his name, said the blast was caused by a roadside bomb.

Russia's Investigative Committee said on its Web site that Passengers were getting off the bus near the entrance to the central market in Vladikavkaz when the blast went off.

Chermen Zangiev, Chief assistant of the head of Investigation Committee, a branch of the national prosecutor-general's office, said they had opened an investigation.

"At the current time we can definitely say that it was a terrorist attack."

North Ossetia borders war-scarred Chechnya as well as Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region, the focus of a war in August between Russia and Georgia.