Russia hunts for train bombers

Russian police on Sunday hunted for the bombers behind an attack that killed around 25 people on an elite passenger train.

Russian police on Sunday hunted for the bombers behind an attack that killed around 25 people on an elite passenger train, while relatives undertook the grim task of identifying bodies.

It remained unclear why attackers had struck the Nevsky Express, a train popular with well-off Russians and foreign tourists, as it ran from Moscow to Saint Petersburg late Friday evening.

"An active investigative and operational effort is under way to identify and find the individuals involved in the crime," Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for investigators, said on state television.

Markin said forensic experts had returned Sunday morning to the scene of the disaster, a wooded area about 400 kilometres (250 miles) northwest of Moscow, to look for clues.

The chief of Russia's FSB security service had said earlier that the blast which derailed the train was caused by an improvised explosive device with the force of seven kilograms (15 pounds) of TNT.

An active investigative and operational effort is under way to identify and find the individuals involved in the crime.

Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for investigators

Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev has said that evidence suggests several persons took part in the attack, and a description of one of the suspects has been released.

There was no immediate credible claim of responsibility for the attack, which led prosecutors to launch a terrorism investigation.

The Nevsky Express was hit by a similar bomb attack in August 2007 which injured 60 people, an incident that remains cloaked in mystery though it has been variously linked to Chechen separatists and Russian ultranationalists.

Friday's attack killed 25 people according to the latest official count, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Sunday, after authorities had previously put the death toll at 26.

Shoigu did not explain the revision, but media reports have said many bodies were torn up in the disaster, making identification difficult.

His ministry said that 12 people were still unaccounted for after the derailment.

"They are neither in hospital among the injured, nor among the dead," Shoigu said in televised remarks.

"I hope that by the end of the day all the bodies will be identified and we will publish the list of people we are looking for."

A total of 104 people were injured in the disaster, according to the emergency situations ministry.

The Interfax news agency quoted a local emergency situations ministry official as saying that only one of the bodies was still to be identified.

Six foreigners were among the injured, including one Italian in serious condition at a Saint Petersburg hospital, Health Minister Tatyana Golikova said.

The others were a Belgian, an Azerbaijani, two Belarussians and one Ukrainian, Golikova was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

The process of formally identifying bodies began on Sunday in Tver, a city between Moscow and Saint Petersburg which is the regional capital of the area where the train was attacked.

Sixty-five relatives of the train disaster victims were in Tver to examine the corpses being held in a local morgue, a spokeswoman for the regional government, Galina Fedoseyeva, told the Interfax news agency.

"Nearly all of them needed psychological help," Fedoseyeva was quoted as saying.

Russian Railways, the state company that oversees the country's railroads, said in a statement that train service between Moscow and Saint Petersburg had been "fully restored" as of Sunday morning.