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Odessa railway blast classified as terrorist act

A bomb went off under a cargo train in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa earlier on Wednesday, nobody was hurt

© TASS/Yuri Smityuk

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Explosion hits railway in southern Ukraine

ODESSA, December 24. /TASS/. The explosion at the Zastava-1 station of the Odessa railway has been classified as a terrorist act, spokeswoman for the Odessa department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) Anna Shevchuk told the Ukrinform news agency on Wednesday.

A bomb went off under a cargo train in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa earlier on Wednesday. Nobody has been hurt in the explosion.

“The crime has been classified as a terrorist act under Article 258, part 1 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code,” she said.

According to Shevchuk, the investigation is conducted by a combined team of operatives of the regional SSU and Interior departments.

“The bomb went off right under the train when it was moving in the area of the Zastava-1 station in Odessa. There have been no casualties. The blast smashed two concrete railway ties and formed a metre-wide crater,” the transport policemen who arrived at the scene said. The explosion took place under a freight train loaded with coal.

Rail workers have been engaged in the track restoration efforts.

In another rail incident that took place on Tuesday, a railway bridge across the Kalchik River in Mariupol (a city in the Donetsk region in the southeast of Ukraine) was exploded as a result of which train traffic was suspended.

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