Russian rail route operating again after attack on train

Nov 29, 2009, 6:52 GMT

   Moscow - Rail travel between Moscow and St Petersburg resumed on Sunday, two days after a bomb placed on the tracks derailed an express train, killing at least 26 people.

Passenger services on Russia's busiest rail link re-started during the morning, state-run national railways said on its website.

Some 661 passengers were on the 13-carriage Nevksy Express when the rear carriages of the train derailed. Some 18 people remained unaccounted for, while 80 were still being treated in hospital on Sunday.

A right-wing nationalist group claimed responsibility for planting the bomb, but those behind the attack were believed to be Chechen rebels or criminals.

'We are indeed talking about a terrorist attack,' a spokesman for the investigating committee, Vladimir Markin, told the Russian news agency Interfax.

The bomb contained the equivalent of 7 kilograms of TNT, investigations showed. A second explosion occurred during rescue operations on Saturday, but no one was injured.

   Reports cited passengers as saying how they had heard a loud bang just before the derailment as the train was speeding along at 200 kilometres per hour.

   In the aftermath, survivors criticised the rescue operations. They said they had to wait for more than an hour until doctors arrived and they were given little information about the situation.

The Nevsky Express is popular with businessmen and tourists. It was the target of an attack in August 2007 when 60 people were injured.

Two Chechens were arrested for that attack, which was carried out with the help of a disgruntled former Russian soldier.

Extremists from conflict regions in the northern Caucasus have been blamed for a string of attacks on civilian targets in Russia.