- (AFP) - At least 40 people died and 180 were injured
when a blast blamed on terrorists ripped through a Russian commuter train
near the war-torn republic of Chechnya, two days before a national parliamentary
election.
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- The interior ministry in Moscow said a suicide bomber
was behind the blast, which was so powerful that it ripped one of the train's
cars in half, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported Friday.
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- Another theory was that the blast was caused by a remote-controlled
bomb placed on the train tracks, reported Rossiya television.
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- Television images showed one of the carriages as a mangled
wreck of metal with shreds of bloodied clothing hanging from poking-out
rods. The roof was collapsed, the windows blown out. The other train cars
looked intact.
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- At least 28 people died on the spot and four died in
hospital in the Stavropol district, which lies north of Chechnya, emergency
ministry officials in Moscow told AFP.
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- Forty-five peole were rushed to local hospitals, eight
of them in emergency care, rescue officials told Russian television. Thirty
people were treated for minor injuries and released.
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- "We will find those who have committed this terrorist
act," Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov vowed.
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- "The earth will burn under their feet. These animals
will never feel safe anywhere," said Gryzlov, who heads the main pro-Kremlin
party that leads opinion polls ahead of Sunday's election, the ITAR-TASS
news agency reported.
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- "We will find them and punish them according to
the law," he said.
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- More than 100 rescue personnel searched for bodies and
survivors at the site of the blast, which ripped through a train on the
Kislovodsk-Mineralnye Vody line, a few kilometers (miles) from the town
of Essentuki, around 8 a.m. (0500 GMT), officials said.
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- "There was a bomb in the second car of the train
that went off as it approached the Essentuki station," an unnamed
police source told the Interfax news agency.
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- Officials from the Southern Region's prosecutor's office
have left for the blast site and President Vladimir Putin had been informed
of the explosion, news agencies said.
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- Twin blasts rocked the same commuter line two months
ago, killing four and injuring 32, many of them teenagers travelling to
attend univerity classes in the town of Pyatigorsk.
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- The Stavropol region lies north of Chechnya, where rebels
have been battling Russian troops since the start of the second Russian-Chechen
war in October 1999.
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- A top lawmaker blamed Friday's blast on Chechen separatists.
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- "Since practically all of our attacks are linked
to Chechnya, it's clear these Chechen rebels" are responsible for
the blast, Alexander Gurov, chief of the State Duma's defense committee,
told Moscow Echo radio.
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- The rebels' goal was "to remind ahead of elections
that they exist, they have not been defeated and for the government to
think about that," Gurov said.
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- A wave of bombings blamed on Chechen guerrillas, claiming
more than 150 lives, had struck Russia ahead of a Kremlin-organized October
5 presidential poll in the republic.
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- The election was called by Putin -- who launched the
Chechen offensive while still serving as prime minister in October 1999
-- in a bid to find a political solution to the four-year conflict.
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