MOSCOW (Reuters) - An explosion hit a railway technician's engine in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, slightly injuring its operator, Russian Railways said, and investigators said they suspected the blast was a terrorist attack.
No passenger carriages were attached to the engine, which was used to check lineside equipment. But the blast could raise fears of train travel two months after a bomb killed 26 people aboard an passenger express from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
Russian Railways did not say what caused the blast near St. Petersburg's Baltic Station, on a line leading to Belarus. But RIA news agency, citing law enforcement authorities, said it was apparently a bomb and left a metre-wide crater.
"We consider it a terrorist act, that's the main theory," the Interfax news agency quoted Anatoly Kvashnin, head of a regional investigative department for transport systems, as saying. There was no word on possible suspects.
In November, a bomb exploded on the tracks between Russia's largest cities. Islamic militants from Russia's North Caucasus claimed responsibility for the attack on the Nevsky Express and vowed further "acts of sabotage," but no major attacks have followed so far.
Traffic was halted Tuesday on part of the line near the blast site, Russian Railways said.
(Writing by Steve Gutterman; editing by David Stamp)
