MOSCOW, January 22. /ITAR-TASS/. Repairs teams scrambled to mend the hole in the Moscow Metro tunnel between the "Avtozavodskaya" and "Kolomenskaya" stations, after it was punctured by a pile on Wednesday afternoon.

The incident occurred at 15:28 Moscow time (11:28 GMT) on the outbound track of the route commonly known as "the green line." Nobody was hurt, and the passengers in trains that were stopped in the proximity to the puncture were led out, a Metro administration official told Itar-Tass. Traffic was halted from the Avtozavodskaya to Orekhovo stations, but the Metro continues the operation in other areas of the green line.

The official said he could not tell when traffic might resume.

City authorities launched a bus service to help out the stranded passengers in the affected area.

A similar incident occurred on the green line between the Voilovskaya and Sokol stations in March 2006, when a pile driven into the ground from the surface punctured the roof of the tunnel dropping two other piles on a passing train. It was carrying 500 passengers, but none was injured in the incident.