By Xinhua
Moscow : A terrorist attack was supposed to be the cause of the derailment of a train traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, which injured 60 passengers late on Monday, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.
The passenger train derailment in Novgorod region “was caused by a homemade bomb explosion,” officials of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office at the incident site was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
A criminal investigation has been launched under terrorism charges into the bomb blast that derailed the express train, said Sergei Bednichenko, head of the Northwestern Federal District Prosecutor’s Office, at the scene.
Sixty people were injured when the passenger train on the Moscow-St. Petersburg route derailed in Novgorod region late Monday, and 25 were sent to hospitals, the press service of Russian Railways reported on Tuesday.
The incident occurred at 21:43 Moscow time (1743 GMT), at the 179th km of the Oktyabrskaya Railway near Malaya Vishera, the spokesman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, Viktor Beltsov, told Itar-Tass news agency.
Four of the 12 carriages of the high-speed Nevsky Express derailed, but they did not overturn.
“Smoke began to billow, but the nidus of fire was promptly extinguished,” Beltsov said.
Sixty people sought medical assistance and 25 of them were rushed to hospitals in Veliky Novgorod, a Russian Railways official said.
According to the official, 231 tickets on the Nevsky Express high-speed train were sold on Monday. There were also 20 crewmembers on the train.
No children were among the injured. Acting chief doctor of the Malaya Vishera hospital Svetlana Dyakonova said the injured people were in “medium grave condition.”
No one died in the incident, according to preliminary reports.
Meanwhile, Russian Railways said 12 cars and an electric locomotive derailed in the incident.
“As a result of external impact, several carriages of passenger train No. 166 Moscow-St. Petersburg derailed at the Burga-Malaya Vishra stretch at 21:38 Moscow time,” the company’s official press release said.
The engine driver claimed he had heard a clap just before the incident.
A special diesel train took passengers of the derailed train to St. Petersburg. It left for St. Petersburg at 0:44, Moscow time (2044 GMT).
President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin cut short his trip to Siberia and flew to Novgorod region. A Russian Railways commission led by the vice-president of the company, Viktor Popov, were heading for the scene. The company also set up a crisis headquarters led by its first vice-president Vadim Morozov, a company official said.