Bomb derailed popular Russian train: report

Rail sabotage caused by a home-made bomb overturned an express train in Russia, a railways spokesman said on Tuesday, following an explosion that tossed 13 train carriages off-track and injured dozens.

Report said that at least 27 people were injured when the overnight train heading to St. Petersburg from Moscow derailed on Monday. Three of the victims were critically injured, Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said.

A spokesman for Russian Railways told the Reuters news service "the cause of the accident, as ascertained by the competent organs, was a rupture of the railway tracks by an improvised explosive device."

Local disaster response authorities said there were about 250 passengers on board at the time of the blast, at about 9:45 p.m. local time.

In televised comments, Russian Railways official Alexander Pirkov said the engineer heard a loud bang beneath the locomotive immediately before the incident happened near the city of Novgorod, about 485 kilometres northwest of Moscow.

Reports also said investigators had been looking into a 1.5-metre-by-1.5-metre crater underneath the tracks.

The Moscow-St. Petersburg route is one of the busiest routes for the Russian Railways network, and is particularly popular among foreign tourists.