A blast derailed a passenger train in southern Russia's Dagestan republic late Saturday, but no one was hurt in this latest attack to hit the volatile region, a regional interior ministry official said.

A passenger train running from Makhachkala, Dagestan' regional capital, to Astrakhan was blown up at around 23:00 Moscow time (1900 GMT) Saturday, a duty officer of Makhachkala's transport interior department told the Itar-Tass news agency.

The train's locomotive and two carriages were derailed, Itar-Tass said. At least 400 people were onboard the train, which had nine carriages, and most of the them were transferred to another train station nearby after the blast.

The RIA-Novosti news agency said the bomb had been planted under the railway tracks and was detonated as the train passed by.

Shortly after the blast, unidentified gunmen fired at a car carrying a Federal Security Service officer in Khasavyurt, who was heading for the site of the train blast. The officer was wounded and later taken to hospital.

Dagestan is an impoverished region in Russia's North Caucasus, a region plagued by frequent bomb attacks and kidnappings targeted at security forces and civilians.

Two powerful explosions rocked Ingushetia, a republic that borders Dagestan, Thursday afternoon, injuring the prime minister of the republic and killing one of his guards.

The latest string of attacks came just days before the one-year anniversary of the Beslan school siege in North Ossetia, another republic in the North Caucasus region.

More than 330 people, 172 of them young school children, were killed in the siege, which ended after government forces stormed the school seized by armed militants last September.

Source: Xinhua