Bomb hits passenger train in Dagestan
MAKHACHKALA, Russia (Reuters) - A bomb exploded under a train in Russia's troubled Dagestan on Monday but there were no fatalities, police said, just days after a similar blast killed 26 passengers on a train from Moscow to St Petersburg.
An explosive went off under train No. 374 en route from Siberian oil town Tyumen to Azerbaijan's capital Baku at 5:52 a.m. (0252 GMT), said a police spokesman in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala.
"The train had eight passenger carriages and it proceeded along its route despite the blast. No passengers were hurt," the spokesman said. Local agencies quoted prosecutors as saying the bomb was equivalent to 300 grams of TNT.
A bomb derailed a high-speed Russian train on Friday night on the main line between Moscow and Russia's second city, St Petersburg, raising fears of a new wave of bomb attacks five years after a bombing campaign in Moscow by Chechen rebels.
A woman injured in the blast died of serious wounds in a hospital later, Health Minister Tatyana Golikova said on Monday.
No one has claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing, but security analysts told Reuters militant groups from Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus were the most likely culprits.
Dagestan and Ingushetia, plagued by corruption and poverty, have become the main targets of Islamist rebels as violence spills over from neighboring Chechnya where Moscow forces have fought two wars against separatists since the mid-1990s.
(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Louise Ireland)
