Police arrest man after Russian train bombs

A man has been arrested after at least five people died when bombs rocked a commuter train in southern Russia today.

Two bombs exploded under the train on route from Kislovodsk to Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus region.

Viktor Kazantsev, President Vladimir Putin’s envoy to southern Russia, said police had arrested a man suspected of detonating the bombs which hit the train.

Nikolai Lityuk, a deputy chief of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s branch in southern Russia, said that up to 30 people were wounded in the explosion which occurred as the train was approaching a station in the town of Podkumok.

Each of the two bombs contained about 150 grams of explosives according to a preliminary estimate.

An officer at the military headquarters that oversees Chechnya said they had recently received intelligence information that the rebels were preparing a series of attacks throughout southern Russia.

Railway Ministry’s spokesman Konstantin Pashkov said the bombs were planted on the railway track. There were about 50 people in the third car of the six carriage train which was directly hit by the explosion, he said.

Russia has been rocked by continuous bomb explosions recently and other attacks which the government usually has blamed on the Chechen rebels.