At Least 25 Die in Train Blast Near Chechnya

An explosion that authorities described as a probable terrorist attack killed at least 25 people and injured 67 on an intercity commuter train near war-torn Chechnya early today.

The blast occurred near a railway station in southern Russia’s Stavropol region. Russian forces have been fighting separatist rebels in Chechnya for years, and terrorist acts related to the conflict periodically occur outside the republic’s borders.

“So far we are not absolutely sure, but there is a big suspicion that a suicide bombing took place on that train,” said Yelena Annenkova, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman. “Right now we are trying to have it confirmed.”

The Russian news agency Itar-Tass, quoting an unnamed Interior Ministry source, said a female suicide bomber wearing a belt of explosives was believed to have set off the blast.

Initial reports said investigators were uncertain whether the explosion occurred on the train or underneath it.

The train’s second car was reportedly knocked onto its side and destroyed by the blast. The train was traveling between the cities of Kislovodsk and Mineralnye Vody.

Most of those wounded in the incident were hospitalized, said Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Andrei Yegorov. He said 25 people were confirmed dead.

It was the second recent bomb attack on a commuter train in the northern Caucasus region.

On Sept. 3, two bombs exploded Sept. 3 under a train packed with students on their way to school, killing six and wounding more than 50. Authorities said that blast was probably a Chechen terrorist attack.

Moscow renewed its war against Chechen separatists in 1999 after bombings of apartment complexes elsewhere in Russia that authorities blamed on Chechen terrorists and an incursion by rebels into neighboring Dagestan.

At least 5,000 Russian soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed.