Global General

10 suspects held in Russia train bombing

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-03-10 19:55

MOSCOW - Ten men captured by Russian security forces in a raid that killed a militant leader last week have been arrested as suspects in a deadly November train bombing, Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday.

The suspects were detained in a two-day operation in a village in the mainly Muslim Ingushetia province that officials said left eight dead including Alexander Tikhomirov, a prominent insurgent leader who went by the name Said Buryatsky.

The head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) told President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday that evidence from the site linked Tikhomirov's group to the bombing of the Nevsky Express, which killed 26 people travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

The train bombing was the deadliest attack in Russia outside the North Caucasus in five years and raised fears of a new wave of bombings in Russia's heartland.

Moscow's Basmanny Court sanctioned the arrest of the ten suspects last week and they have been brought to the capital, state-run RIA quoted court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova as saying.

Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the Nevsky Express bombing on unofficial Islamist websites, but Buryatsky himself had never claimed responsibility.