You're reading: Dagestan blasts linked to Moscow Metro bombing

Two bombs exploded in Russia's Dagestan province on Sunday, derailing a freight train in an attack a security source linked to suicide bombings in Moscow and the same region, RIA news agency reported.

Russia is on edge after the suicide attacks in Moscow and Dagestan killed more than 50 people in the past week. Nobody was wounded in the latest attack.

The pre-dawn blasts on a rail line leading from Moscow to the ex-Soviet republic of Azerbaijan caused nine wagons of a train carrying construction materials to derail. Television footage showed pipes spilled from damaged wagons.

"The first data show that this explosion is continuation of the terrorist attack from fighters of the Northern Caucasus, that started on March 29," a source in Russia’s security services, was quoted by RIA as saying, referring to the date of the Moscow attacks.

After the first blast derailed eight of the wagons, a second device went off, Russian news agencies reported.

"The device was placed near the railway track 25 metres from the first one and was meant to be blown up when police and investigators arrived at the scene," ITAR-Tass quoted a source in the regional transport police as saying.

Security was tight in Moscow as President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended an overnight ceremony on Russian Orthodox Easter — the most important holiday for the country’s dominant religion.

On Wednesday, two suicide bombings in the Dagestani town of Kizlyar killed 12 people including nine police officers, authorities said.

That attack came two days after twin suicide bombings in Moscow’s metro killed at least 40 and stoked fears of a major campaign of attacks in Russia’s heartland by militant based in the heavily Muslim North Caucasus, which includes Dagestan.

In November, a bombing blamed on North Caucasus militants killed 26 people on a passenger train from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

The Chechen rebel leader seeking an Islamist state across the North Caucasus has claimed responsibility for the Moscow metro bombings. Russian authorities said on Friday that one of the bombers was a 17-year-old Dagestan native, the widow of a militant killed by Russian forces.
Like neighbouring Chechnya and nearby Ingushetia, Dagestan has been plagued by a surge of violence in the past two years, with frequent attacks targeting law enforcement.