Seven people were killed and dozens injured after bridges in two separate Russian regions bordering Ukraine collapsed overnight, officials said yesterday, with rail authorities blaming at least one incident on “illegal interference.”
In Russia’s Bryansk region bordering Ukraine, a road bridge collapsed onto a railway line late on Saturday, derailing a passenger train heading to Moscow and killing seven people.
A separate rail bridge in the neighboring Kursk region also collapsed overnight, derailing a freight train and injuring the driver, officials said.
Photo: Reuters
Authorities did not say what caused the collapses, nor provide details on the incidents, but prosecutors said they had opened an investigation.
Videos posted on social media from the Bryansk region showed rescuers clambering over the mangled chassis of a train belonging to national operator Russian Railways, while screams could be heard in another video.
“There are seven dead as a result of the collapse of a bridge onto railway tracks,” Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz wrote on Telegram.
At least 66 others were injured, including three children, he said, giving a revised toll.
In a separate incident in the Kursk region, a rail bridge collapsed onto a road, derailing a freight train.
“Last night... in the Zheleznogorsk district, a bridge collapsed while a freight locomotive was passing. Part of the train fell onto the road below the bridge,” Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Telegram.
“One of the locomotive drivers suffered leg injuries, and the entire crew was taken to hospital,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from Russian investigators on the cause of either collapse.
Moscow Railway, a state-owned railway operator, had blamed the incident in the Bryansk region on “illegal interference in the operation of transport” in a post online.
However, it later appeared to have removed the reference to “illegal interference” from its post.
Ukraine, which Russia has blamed for previous incidents, did not immediately comment.
An Agence France-Presse reporter in central Moscow saw ambulances parked at Kievsky railway station awaiting the arrival of injured passengers.
In one video posted from the Bryansk region social media account, someone could be heard screaming as eyewitnesses rushed to find help.
“How did the bridge collapse? There are children there,” a woman can be heard shouting in the video.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA
South Korea yesterday said that it was removing loudspeakers used to blare K-pop and news reports to North Korea, as the new administration in Seoul tries to ease tensions with its bellicose neighbor. The nations, still technically at war, had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. It said in June that Pyongyang stopped transmitting bizarre, unsettling noises along the border that had become a major nuisance for South Korean residents, a day after South Korea’s loudspeakers fell silent. “Starting today, the military has begun removing the loudspeakers,”
CHINA’s BULLYING: The former British prime minister said that he believes ‘Taiwan can and will’ protect its freedom and democracy, as its people are lovers of liberty Former British prime minister Boris Johnson yesterday said Western nations should have the courage to stand with and deepen their economic partnerships with Taiwan in the face of China’s intensified pressure. He made the remarks at the ninth Ketagalan Forum: 2025 Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prospect Foundation in Taipei. Johnson, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time, said he had seen Taiwan’s coastline on a screen on his indoor bicycle, but wanted to learn more about the nation, including its artificial intelligence (AI) development, the key technology of the 21st century. Calling himself an
RSS