A woman who was wounded after a female suicide bomber blew herself up in the southern Russian region of Dagestan has died of her wounds.

A female suicide bomber blew herself up in Russia yesterday, injuring at least 18 people, including two children and five police officers. Police and doctors today announced that a 37-year-old woman died of her sounds. She was the only person to die other than the female suicide bomber herself. Several other people remain hospitalized in serious condition.

Police spokeswoman Fatina Ubaidatova said the female suicide bomber was identified as Madina Alieva, 25. Dagestan's police spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said Alieva detonated an explosives-laden belt in the central square in the provincial capital, Makhachkala.

The female suicide bomber has been identified as the widow of two Islamic radicals killed by security forces. Dagestan is at the center of violent confrontation between Islamic extremists and federal forces. Islamic extremists want to create an independent Muslim state, or "emirate," in the Caucasus and parts of southern Russia with a sizable Muslim population.

The suicide bombing in Dagestan recalls last month’s Boston Marathon attack. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, spent six months in Dagestan in 2012 before moving to the U.S. Tsarnaev was killed a shootout with police days after the April 15 bombings.

At least two dozen women, most of them from the Caucasus, have carried out suicide bombings in Russian cities since 2000. They have all been to an Islamic insurgency that spread throughout Dagestan and the predominantly Muslim Caucasus region after two separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya. The bombers are often called "black widows" because many are the widows, or other relatives, of militants killed by security forces. Islamic militants are said to convince "black widows" that a suicide bombing will reunite them with their dead relatives beyond the grave.

A double explosion in Makhachkala killed four civilians and left 44 injured this week. Three security officers and three suspected militants have been killed in other incidents. One device was planted in a parked car, another was placed in a garbage can.