Chechen rebels claim Russian train bombing

MOSCOW — Chechen rebels claimed responsibility Wednesday for blowing up a high-speed Russian train last week, an attack that killed 26 people, injured scores of others and raised fears of a fresh wave of terror attacks.

The Chechen claim, posted on a Web site sympathetic to the militants, could buttress the suspicions of Russian investigators, who have been tracing the attack to Islamist separatists in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region.

The separatist statement, issued on behalf of Chechen separatist leader Doku Umarov, claimed Friday's bombing of a Moscow-St. Petersburg express train was carried out on his orders.

"We declare that this operation was prepared and carried out ... pursuant to the order of the Emir of Caucasus Emirate," or Umarov, it said.

Umarov is thought to head a network of separatist cells across the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region that are fighting to break free from Moscow's rule. The rebels are blamed for regular attacks on law enforcement officials in the area's five autonomous republics since the end of two bloody separatist wars in Chechnya.

Russian authorities have said the train's derailment was an act of terrorism and traces of explosives and a crater were found at the disaster site. Government officials were among those killed in the train bombing.

The bombing was the first deadly terrorist attack outside the North Caucasus since the bombings of two airliners and a Moscow subway station attack in 2004.

The attack has struck a nerve in Russian society. About 1,500 people gathered for a state-sanctioned anti-terrorism rally in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.

Participants in the protest, organized by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party United Russia, held banners, with slogans including "Terrorists are not People and "Find and Annihilate."

Rights activists charge that devastating militant attacks in the Caucasus — such as August's bombing of a police station in the capital of Ingushetia, which claimed more than 20 lives — are the bitter fruit of a brutal counterterrorism campaign by Russian authorities. The past year has seen a surge in suicide bombings and assassinations.

"The scariest thing is that this might not be an isolated attack," said political analyst Yulia Latynina. "It could be the start of a series."