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Site of a train derailment in Russia - Source: Reuters -
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At least 39 people were killed and nearly 100 injured when a
Russian express train came off the rails on Saturday in what the
head of the national railway company said could have been a bomb
attack.
The Nevsky Express, carrying 661 passengers from Moscow to St
Petersburg, was derailed near the village of Uglovka about 350 km
north of Moscow.
A photographer saw soldiers carrying four body bags away from the
scene where rescue workers cut through the tangled steel to search
for survivors in two wrecked train carriages.
"There is objective evidence that... a blast from an explosive
device is one of the explanations for the Nevsky Express incident,"
Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin told reporters at the
scene.
A spokesman for Russia's main domestic intelligence service, the
FSB, declined to comment on whether an attack was suspected, saying
merely that investigators were at work.
Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu was told by a ministry official
on a video conference shown live on Vesti-24 state television that
the death toll had risen to 39 after more bodies had been pulled
from wrecked carriages.
Ministry officials later said only 25 people had been confirmed as
dead, though they said the toll could rise and that at least 18
people were still unaccounted for.
The derailment is Russia's worst train accident for years and talk
of sabotage is likely to raise fears of an upsurge in attacks on
the Russian heartland by rebels from the North
Caucasus.
Attack suspected
President Dmitry Medvedev has been informed about the derailment
which has delayed 27,000 people as transport officials tried to
divert trains along smaller lines.
Interfax news agency said a one-metre wide crater had been found
next to the railway track, though reporters at the scene did not
see one.
A railway official who asked not to be named said a witness had
reported hearing a loud bang, though another passenger told
reporters in St Petersburg there had been no blast.
After a blast on August 13, 2007 that derailed the Nevsky Express
and injured at least 30 people, prosecutors arrested two residents
of Ingushetia and charged them with helping to carry out the
attack.
Russian prosecutors said they believed ex-soldier Pavel Kosolapov,
a former associate of the late Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev,
was the mastermind behind the blast. Kosolapov is still on the
run.
In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "We are
deeply saddened by the terrible loss of life and injuries resulting
from the reported derailment of a train between Moscow and Saint
Petersburg."
