2 Bombs Rip Through Commuter Train  

Sep.3, 2003

By Sergei Venyavsky
The Associated Press  

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Southern Russia -- Two bomb blasts rocked a crowded commuter train in the southern Stavropol region on Wednesday, killing at least four people and injuring dozens of others in the latest deadly attack in areas surrounding Chechnya, officials said.

Dmitry Oliferenko, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin's envoy to southern Russia, said five people died when two bombs exploded under the train en route from Kislovodsk to Mineralniye Vody.

Railways Minister Gennady Fadeyev said in televised comments that six people were killed -- three in the explosions and three others afterward. But regional Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Igor Mikhailov said that four were killed and 33 injured.

Channel One television said four students were killed by the morning explosions, and survivors told networks that many of the people on the train were college students and other young people. NTV television reported that the dead were an 18-year-old woman, two 21-year-old men and a 15-year-old boy. Many universities begin their fall semesters this month.

Local television channels showed the train, one of its cars derailed by the explosion, surrounded by officials and ambulances.

"Everything shook from side to side," passenger Ilya Kamyshanov said in an interview with Rossia television from a hospital bed. "All that I can remember is, lots of dust all over the place and everything shaking."

Hours after the blasts, 21 of the injured remained hospitalized, eight of them in serious condition, Mikhailov said.

Viktor Kazantsev, Putin's envoy to the Southern Federal District, said on television that police have arrested a man suspected of detonating the bombs. Local police said the suspect was injured in the explosion and hospitalized in critical condition.

The blasts hit as the train was approaching a small station on the outskirts of Kislovodsk, officials said. Railways Ministry spokesman Konstantin Pashkov said the bombs were planted on the railroad track and that there were about 50 people in a car that was directly hit by a blast.

Each of the two bombs contained about 150 grams of explosives, according to a preliminary estimate.

Russia has been rocked by several suicide bombings and other blasts that the government has blamed mostly on Chechen rebels. A string of bombings in and around Chechnya and in Moscow has killed more than 150 people since May.

An officer at the headquarters of the North Caucasus Military District, which oversees Chechnya, said on condition of anonymity Wednesday that the military recently received intelligence information that rebels were preparing a series of attacks throughout southern Russia.

The explosion occurred just hours before Putin arrived in the city of Rostov-on-Don, some 450 kilometers northwest of the explosion site, to lead a meeting of the presidential State Council, made up of regional governors. Putin spoke with Stavropol Governor Alexander Chernogorov about the explosions, local news agencies reported.


Blast in commuter train kills five

03.09.2003

YESSENTUKI, North Caucasus, September 3 (Itar-Tass) - Five people died and as 34 wounded were wounded by a blast in a Kislovodsk-Mineralnye Vody commuter train on Wednesday at 07.30, Tass learnt at the Pyatigorsk police department.

The blast thundered at a section between the Podkumok-Bely Ugol railway stations. The incident is now being investigated by squads of police and the local security service as well as demolition men.

According to preliminary information, a terrorist who blasted a commuter train, driving from the city of Kislovodsk this morning, was heavily wounded himself by the explosion, Tass learnt at the office of Governor of the Stavropol Territory Alexander Chernogorov.

According to the office, on activating the explosive device which was planted under rail tracks, he had no time to run away from the place and was wounded by splinters and the blast.

A hospital where he was checked in, was not called in the interests of investigation. It was only reported that his state is serious, and he is at the intensive treatment ward.

The blast threw one coach off the tracks, and it caught fire. Several more coaches also caught fire.

Press secretary of the department of the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office for the North Caucasus Sergei Prokopov, now at the place of the incident, said that the department instituted a criminal case under articles "terrorism" (Article 205) and "murder" (Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code).

As many as 34 wounded were whisked off to hospitals of the Stavropol Territory from the place of the blast of a commuter train, driving from the spa city of Kislovodsk. Medics described the state of three of them as very serious, Tass learnt from public health department head of the Stavropol territorial administration Galina Fedoseyeva.

According to Fedoseyeva, the exact number of the dead has not been established yet: three or five people supposedly died. The department sent two teams of skilled doctors and medicines to hospitals to render aid to blast victims. Most of them have splinter wounds and burns.

The department for civil defence and emergency situations of the Stavropol Territory reported that a fire broke out as a result of the blast. Fire fighters cannot put it out up to this time.

Most of the wounded - 25 people - were brought to the hospital in Kislovodsk.