30 November 09, Monday morning (Russia time): Yet another attack on a passenger train in the Southern Russian region the Republic of Dagestan (once known as the Islamic Republic of Dagestan), which shares a border with Chechnia.
Photo in this report shows bomb damage to the train track similar to that in last Friday's attack on the Moscow-St.Petersburg line. This occurred on the Tyumen-Baku route. The short report states that a bomb was detonated under the track; however, the train cars did not derail. (hat tip TC)
The Russian train (the "Nevsky Express") was bombed on the railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg (most specifically near the town of Bologoe in the Novgorod Region). Much thanks to TC for his invaluable Russian translations. Here are his observations:
The Russians have not yet tagged anyone or any group specifically but are calling it a "terrorist act" (which -so far in Russia -is almost synomymous with islamic variety. "PC" has infected even the Russians to a certain degree...).
Also, and generally speaking, the Russians will call an action such as this "terrorism" when they are fairly certain that they will deem it an islamic action (however, they have not used the "i" word (nor the "m" or "jihad")).
They are searching for 3 individuals (so will likely catch up and announce who -soon).
They have mentioned that a similar train bombing (a few years) earlier was done by Chechens (islamic) and chechen-cause (islamic) sympathizers.
Their news is also claiming that there is a now a resurgence of islamic activities related to the never-ending Chechen "rebel" problems (i.e. islamist jihad movement) - which is and indirect link to this train incident.
On the other hand - it could all be a cover for a different crime as several relatively high level officials are reported to have been killed in this incident:
"Among the dead were several senior Kremlin bureaucrats: Boris Yevstratikov, the head of Russia's Federal Reserve Agency; Lyudmila Mukhina, a deputy head in the Federal Fishing Agency; former St Petersburg senator, Sergei Tarasov.
'This was a terrorist attack': Bomb derails 130mph Russian train leaving 26 dead, 100 injuredA home-made bomb was used in the suspected terrorist strike on a Russian express train which left at least 26 dead and 96 injured, security sources said yesterday.
The death toll was expected to rise last night as 18 passengers were still missing in the contorted remains of the last two coaches of the 14-carriage Nevsky Express.
Russian security service chief Alexander Bortnikov blamed ‘an improvised explosive device equivalent to 7kg of TNT’ for the crash.
Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Vladimir Markin called it ‘a terrorist act’.
