Victims being identified after Russian train wreck

By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW – Relatives on Sunday begun the grim process of identifying loved ones killed in the wreck of an express train Russian authorities say was blown off the tracks by a terrorist bomb.

Other relations visited the scores of injured victims in hospitals, while investigators tried to determine who was behind what would be Russia's deadliest terrorist attack outside the violence-plagued North Caucasus provinces in five years.

The rear three cars of the Nevsky Express, one of Russia's fastest trains, derailed on a remote stretch of track late Friday as it sped from Moscow to St. Petersburg, killing some passengers and trapping others in the jumbled wreckage. The head of Russia's Federal Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov, said Saturday that an explosive device detonated underneath the train, gouging a crater in the railbed and pulling the tail cars off the tracks.

Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said at least 25 people were killed and 26 others were unaccounted for, though he indicated some of them may have survived uninjured or never have boarded the train. Authorities had put the confirmed death toll at 26 on Saturday, but Shoigu said they had revised it down based on more accurate information.

A total of 104 people were listed as hospitalized early Sunday, but Health Minister Tatyana Golikova said later that 85 remained hospitalized, 21 of them in grave condition, according to Russian news agencies. She said six foreigners were among the injured, including two from outside the former Soviet Union — a Belgian and an Italian.

Relatives were identifying victims Sunday at a hospital morgue in Tver, the closest sizable city to the wreck site near the border of the Tver and Novgorod provinces, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) northwest of Moscow.

The state-run railway company Russian Railways said train traffic was fully restored Sunday after repairs on the busy line between the capital and St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city.

President Dmitry Medvedev called for calm on Saturday, and the leader of the dominant Russian Orthodox Church on Sunday urged Russians not to give n to fear, saying they should help authorities and "display firm will for a victory over terror."

"Our people have been challenged. A demonstrative crime of which any one of us could have been a victim has been committed," Patriarch Kirill said in a statement. "They want to frighten everybody who lives in Russia."

There were no credible claims of responsibility, but sketches were being composed of several suspects, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said Saturday, including a stocky man of about 40 with red hair. The description was apparently based on what Russian media said were statements from people living in towns near the site who said thy had seen strangers around recently.

There was no word on a possible motive, but speculation over who might have been behind the derailment focused on militants in the volatile North Caucasus and extreme Russian nationalists.

Russia has been hit by a number of major terrorist attacks since the 1991 Soviet collapse, most of them linked to the devastating 1990s wars between government forces and separatist its rebels in Chechnya and the violence the conflicts have spawned across the surrounding North Caucasus.

But there have been few terrorist attacks elsewhere in Russia since bomb blasts downed two passenger planes on flights from Moscow in 2004, killing nearly 100 people just days before the hostage seizure at a school in Beslan, in a province bordering Chechnya, which led to more than 330 deaths.

Deadly violence has persisted in the North Caucasus and increased over the past year. Rights activists say government security services in the region have stepped up the use of kidnappings, killings and home-burnings against suspected militants in the North Caucasus and their relatives.

Extreme nationalism is also a deadly problem in Russia. Skinheads and neo-Nazi groups have carried out frequent attacks, mostly targeting ethnic groups from the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Nationalists were blamed in a similar blast that caused a derailment along the same railway line in 2007, injuring 27 passengers. Authorities arrested two suspects in the 2007 train blast and are searching for a third, a former military officer.