The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Russia: Train Derailment was Homemade Bomb
Terror strikes Russia again (via Fox News):Prosecutors on Tuesday opened a terrorism investigation into an explosion that threw an express train on one of Russia's major passenger routes off the tracks, injuring 60 people.
The blast about 9:30 p.m. Monday hit the Neva Express train that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The locomotive and a dozen passenger cars derailed near the city of Novgorod, about 300 miles north of the capital.
A duty officer for the national prosecutor-general's office said a terrorism investigation had been opened, but could not provide further details.
The Interfax news agency cited top regional prosecutor Sergei Bednichenko as saying that the blast had the equivalent power of about 4.5 pounds of TNT.
At least 60 people were injured in the derailment, 25 of whom were hospitalized, news reports said.
The train's driver heard a loud report underneath the locomotive immediately before the incident happened, Alexander Pirkov, an adviser to Russian Railways' top executive, said in televised comments.
Pirkov said 215 passengers and 20 crew members were on the train at the time. All traffic along the railway — a major passenger and cargo route — was halted.
