Russia eyes suspects involved in train derailment

Several people are suspected of bombing the Russian express train that derailed on Friday night, Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said Saturday, Xinhua reported.

"There are several people who could have been involved in the attack," Nurgaliyev told reporters.
He said one of the suspects was a man "about 40, stumpy and red- haired," but added that "the information needs to be checked and verified."

Nurgaliyev also called on citizens who have any related information to report it to police.
The Nevsky Express, enroute to St. Petersburg from Moscow, derailed Friday night near the town of Bologoye on the border between the Tver and Novgorod regions, killing at least 26 people and injuring dozens more.

Russian intelligence officers said the train crash was caused by a bomb blast. A second, weaker bomb went off at 2 p.m. local time (1100 GMT) at the scene, but nobody was injured, according to Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin.

A criminal case has been opened on possible terrorist attack and illegal explosives possession charges over the wreck.

Separately, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said rescuers were concluding work at the site.
The health minister said that the 18 people listed as missing after the incident had not been located in the three car that went off the tracks.

In August 2007, an explosion derailed the same express train on the same railroad line, injuring 60 people. An investigation into that attack continues, with the main suspect still being sought by authorities.

The disaster has fueled fears of a rise in terrorist attacks outside Russia's volatile North Caucasus region. Russia was hit hard by terrorism in the 1990s and the early years of this decade, but there had been no major incident outside the North Caucasus region since 2004.