Poland Arrests Suspect Of Warsaw Railway Explosion

UNSPLASH ILLUSTRATION/Michael Fobhotsch

JAKARTA - Polish authorities arrested a number of people in connection with an explosion that damaged a railway line linking Warsaw to the Ukrainian border last weekend.

Jacek Dobrzywasski, a spokesman for Poland's secret service minister, said the suspects were being questioned but did not provide details on how many were detained, according to Polish News Agency PAP reported by the Associated Press, Wednesday, November 19.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the explosion as an "unprecedented act of sabotage." Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said it was an "state terror act."

The explosion damaged a railroad near Mika, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Warsaw. No one was injured.

In a separate incident over the weekend, the power cable was destroyed in the Pu Wayawy area, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Lublin in eastern Poland.

On Tuesday, Tusk told Polish parliament authorities suspected two Ukrainian nationals who blew up the railway line.

He accused the suspects of working with the Russian secret service for a long time.

Tusk said their identities were known but could not be disclosed to the public due to ongoing investigations, and that both had left Poland and crossed over to Belarus.

Sikorski said on Wednesday he would order the closure of the country's last Russian consulate still operating in response to the attack.

"In connection with this, although this is not our full response, I have decided to revoke the approval of the operation of the last Russian consulate in Gdansk," he said.

The other two consulates, in Krakow and Poznan, have been closed in recent years. The Russian Embassy in Warsaw remains open.

In response, Moscow will "reduce Polish diplomatic and consular attendance in Russia," state news agency RIA Novosti quoted a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova.