So Much for Chechnya being "Under Control"
Filed under: Russia
Reuters reports that, in an apparent terror attack, a Russian train has been blown off its rails while en route between St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia's two major cities:
Russian Railways said in a statement it was the result of "unauthorized interference in the functioning of the train." One eyewitness said the derailment was preceded by two explosions. "There was a bang under the train. Unfortunately that is the only way we can describe it until investigators and the FSB (state security service) . . . reach their own conclusions," Sergei Mikhailov, an aide to Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin, told Vesti-24 television station. The train derailed just after crossing a bridge over a road, said a Reuters photographer at the scene. A conductor on the train showed Reuters a video he recorded on his mobile telephone of a crater about 2 meters (6 ft) across that could be seen on the bridge, where the rails should have been. "We heard two explosions, then the train put on the brakes suddenly," one conductor, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters. "The train shook. A panic started," he said. "We smashed out the glass and helped the passengers out . . . The worst damage was in the restaurant car. That is where most of the casualties were." The derailed train was blocking two sets of tracks, causing delays to other rail traffic.
This is Moscow, far in the north. The IOC has placed the 2014 Olympics in Russia's most unstable region, the far southern area. Lunacy, pure and simple.
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