A member of the train crew carrying his belongings leaves the site of a train derailment near the village of Malaya Vishera, about 500 km (310 miles) north-west of Moscow, yesterday. An explosion derailed the Russian train travelling between Moscow and St. Petersburg on Monday evening, injuring dozens of passengers. Prosecutors yesterday opened a terrorism investigation into the bomb explosion that threw the express train, one of Russia's major passenger routes, off the tracks, injuring 60 people. - AP

MOSCOW (AP):

Prosecutors opened a terrorism investigation yesterday into a bomb explosion that threw an express train on one of Russia's major passenger routes off the tracks, injuring 60 people.

There were no reported claims of responsibility for the blast, but suspicion fell on insurgents in Chechnya and neighbouring regions of the North Caucasus. Violence in the region has spiked in recent months.

The Interfax news agency, citing unnamed sources, said cables and other evidence found at the blast site strongly resembled the equipment used to detonate a bomb under a train heading from the Chechen capital, Grozny, to Moscow in 2005. That blast injured 42 people.

The blast, about 9:30 p.m. Monday, hit the Neva Express train that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The locomotive and a dozen passenger cars derailed near the city of Novgorod, about 500 kilometres (300 miles) north of the capital.

The prosecutor-general's office said the blast apparently was caused by a homemade bomb with the power of about two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of TNT.

Russian Railways said in a statement that 25 people were hospitalised after the accident, and that 35 others sought treatment at the scene.

The bomb was laid about 30 meters (100 feet) ahead of where the tracks cross a bridge over a roadway, news reports said. But the train crossed the bridge before going off the tracks; the casualty toll likely would have been significantly higher if the train had gone off the approximately 20-meter-high (60-foot-high) bridge.

The train was traveling at 191 kilometres per hour (119 mph), Russian Railways said.

At least two other trains have been hit by bomb attacks in recent years. A bomb placed in a baggage car in a train heading from Kislovodsk to Mineralny Vody killed 47 people on Dec. 5, 2003. Less than three weeks later, a bomb was detonated under a locomotive of a freight train in Chechnya.