Military

DATE=12/5/03

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=RUSSIA TRAIN (L)

NUMBER=2-310546

BYLINE=LISA MCADAMS

DATELINE=MOSCOW

CONTENT=

INTRO: At least 32 people are dead and about 60 others injured after an explosion tore through a commuter train in southern Russia, near Chechnya. V-O-A's Lisa McAdams in Moscow has the latest.

TEXT: Rescuers and investigators rushed to the site of the blast in Southern Russia, near Chechnya, where they met a chaotic scene.

The second car of a commuter train had toppled over on its side, pinning victims beneath mounds of shattered glass. A third car also derailed from the force of the explosion, and many of the dead were thrown from the train.

A spokesman for Russia's Emergency Situations ministry (Viktor Beltsov) says the blast occurred as the train traveled between the towns of Mineralnye Vody and Yessentuki.

The area is located just north of Chechnya, where separatists have been battling Russian federal forces for more than a decade.

The spokesman says investigators on the scene say a bomb is to blame for the destruction.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, which the spokesman called an act of terror. But investigators are focusing their early investigation on reports that a female suicide bomber detonated the explosives from a belt strapped to her waist.

Increasingly, Chechen separatist rebels have turned to women made widows by the Chechen war to carry out violent attacks, leading the women to be called black widows.

The blast is the second explosion to strike a train in the same region in as many months.

President Vladimir Putin ordered an emergency plane of relief workers with medicine to fly immediately to the scene.

Russians are to vote in parliamentary elections Sunday that are expected to increase support for parties backing President Putin. He has said repeatedly that life is returning to normal in, and around, Chechnya. (SIGNED)

NEB/LAM/RAE