Russian train crash kills 39, attack suspected

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At least 39 people were killed and nearly 100 injured when a Russian express train came off the rails late on Friday in what the head of the national railway company said could have been a bomb attack.

The Nevsky Express, carrying 661 passengers from Moscow to St Petersburg, was derailed at 9:34 pm (1834 GMT) near the village of Uglovka about 350 km (200 miles) north of Moscow.

A Reuters photographer saw soldiers carrying four body bags away from the scene where rescue workers cut through the tangled steel to search for survivors in two wrecked train carriages.

"There is objective evidence that... a blast from an explosive device is one of the explanations for the Nevsky Express incident," Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin told reporters at the scene.

A spokesman for Russia's main domestic intelligence service, the FSB, declined to comment on whether an attack was suspected, saying merely that investigators were at work.

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu was told by a ministry official on a video conference shown live on Vesti-24 state television that the death toll had risen to 39 after more bodies had been pulled from wrecked carriages.

Ministry officials later said only 25 people had been confirmed as dead, though they said the toll could rise and that at least 18 people were still unaccounted for.

The derailment is Russia's worst train accident for years and talk of sabotage is likely to raise fears of an upsurge in attacks on the Russian heartland by rebels from the North Caucasus.

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