A train carrying fuel exploded on Sunday near the Georgian city of Gori, causing a thick cloud of noxious black smoke and blocking a vital east-west transportation link, officials and witnesses said.Georgian interior ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the explosion was caused by a mine laid by Russian forces.

An intense fire burned following the explosion and a tower of smoke could be seen from kilometres (miles) around, a correspondent at the scene said. The fire was still not under control by early evening and it was unclear when traffic on the line would be restored, Utiashvili said.

After initially saying the railway had been mined, the spokesman later said it was unclear whether the train had itself struck a mine or if a nearby mine explosion had caused the fire.

Omar Yuramashvili, a shepherd who said he saw the blast, told AFP the train had been travelling west from Gori. He said an initial blast did not come from the railway line itself but from a military complex next to the line.

“When it went off it was the loudest explosion I’ve ever heard. The force was so great that some of the wagons were forced off the tracks,” he said. Georgia’s economic development minister charged that Russian forces had a hand in the blast, saying Moscow wanted to disrupt the energy corridor from the Caspian Sea to western Europe that bypasses Russian territory.

The governor of the surrounding Shida Kartli region, Lado Vardzelashvili, said the train was travelling near a military base occupied by Russian troops until Friday and the explosion had caused no casualties. Five fire engines initially battled to control the blaze, which had also started small bush fires in the vicinity.

One of the wagons was marked Azpetrol, the name of a company based in Baku, the capital of neighbouring Azerbaijan.—AFP