Extreme nationalists under suspicion in Russian terror blast probe

Aug 16, 2007, 12:31 GMT

Moscow - Russian officials investigating a bomb attack on the country's most vital rail connection were reported to have no definite leads to follow Thursday, Interfax news agency said.

An unnamed official quoted by Interfax said that police were not favouring any particular line of enquiry. Suspicion was still reportedly being directed at extreme nationalists and rebels from the Caucasus region.

Monday's attack near Novograd Veliki injured 60 people, 20 of them seriously.

The remote-detonated blast blew the Moscow-St Petersburg Nevsky Express, one of Russia's most modern trains, off the tracks as it travelled at around 180 kilometres an hour with 251 people on board.

The train driver told the Moscow daily paper Izvestija, that the bombers' plan to blow the train off a bridge had been thwarted through sheer 'luck' as the train had already gone over the bridge.

Investigators found remains of a homemade bomb with the force of two kilos of TNT. The blast left a metre-and-a-half-deep crater at the Novograd Veliki site near Malaya Vishera, 500 kilometres north of Moscow.

The tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an identikit picture of a suspect that the Prosecutor General issued Wednesday.