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Around 130 people were wounded in the attack.

No one has claimed responsibility.

Footage from the scene showed widespread damage around the market with many cars destroyed.

"The blast in Vladikavkaz has been organised by a suicide bomber who drove up to the entrance of the market in a Volga 3102 car," said Taimuraz Mamsurov, a senior North Ossetian official.

"The headless body of the presumed terrorist was found in the car which exploded opposite the central market."

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, ordered his envoy for the Russian North Caucasus region, Alexander Khloponin, to urgently fly to Vladikavkaz.

He described the bombers as "bastards".

"We will do everything to capture these monsters... these bastards, who carried out a terrorist act on ordinary people," Mr Medvedev said.

"We will do everything to find and punish them."

Vladikavkaz is the capital of the North Ossetia republic, in the North Caucasus, which has been beset by Islamist and separatist violence.

North Ossetia is where 331 people died in the 2004 Beslan school siege.

The market was bombed in 1999, killing 55, in 2001 killing six people and again in 2004, with 11 people losing their lives.

It the region is north of the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia over which Moscow and Tbilisi fought a war in August 2008.

It is also the only majority Christian region in Russia's largely Muslim North Caucasus.

The neighbouring Muslim region of Ingushetia has been hit by a wave of deadly attacks over the last months.

However, North Ossetia has largely escaped the worst of the violence.