We blew up Russian train, say Islamists

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Islamists from the North Caucasus have claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing last week of a Russian train, according to a statement posted yesterday on a website linked to Chechen rebels.

''This operation was prepared and executed along with other acts of sabotage, planned from the start of this year and successfully carried out against a set of strategically important sites in Russia, on the orders of Caucasus Emir Dokku Umarov,'' the statement on the website KavkazCenter.com said.

The emir is the self-proclaimed leader of the Caucasus Emirate, which has sought to unite various Islamist groups in Russia's North Caucasus and establish sharia rule in the region.

''Attacks will continue until the occupiers in the Caucasus end their policy of killing … Muslims … on the basis of religion,'' the group said in the statement.

Friday's bombing killed 27 and injured about 100 people on the Nevsky Express, a passenger train running from Moscow to St Petersburg that was popular with well-off Russians. The statement on KavkazCenter.com, a website that has been used as a mouthpiece for Chechen rebels, said the train ''was mainly used by the ruling bureaucrats of Russia''.

At least two government officials were killed, and the chief of Russia's Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, was injured by a remote-controlled bomb blast when he arrived at the scene the next day.

There was no immediate way to verify the claim of responsibility. Chechen rebels have previously issued claims that turned out to be bogus, including one for an August disaster at a Siberian hydro-electric power plant that was later shown to have been caused by a technical fault.

Prosecutors have opened a terrorism investigation into the train disaster, the first major attack to hit Russia's heartland, outside the volatile North Caucasus, since a spate of suicide bombings in Moscow in 2003 and 2004.

Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office, had issued no statement on the Chechen claim as of yesterday.
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