Rail freight traffic has resumed on the Crimea Bridge, which was temporarily closed due to a truck bombing on Saturday 8 October. The bridge that connects the Crimean Peninsula with mainland Russia has a truck and railway line. The blast mostly impacted the road section, but also triggered a fire on a bypassing freight train.

On Saturday morning, shortly after 6am, a truck bomb went off on the road lane of the Crimea Bridge. As a result, part of the bridge collapsed, while the explosion triggered a fire on a freight train on the parallel rail section. The train was carrying fuel tanks, and seven of them caught fire.

Quick recovery

According to the Russian ministry of Transport, rail traffic had resumed already slightly by Saturday night. On Sunday, all freight and long-distance passenger trains were running according to schedule, and ferries would help transport additional freight and passengers across the Kerch Strait, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Crimean Bridge, also called the Kerch Bridge, has a four-lane road lane a double-track railway, spanning the Kerch Strait between the Taman Peninsula of Krasnodar Krai in Russia and the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea in Ukraine. It was built byRussia after it annexed the Crimea in 2014. With a length of 19 km, it is the longest bridge in Europe. Freight traffic mostly runs between the Crimea, Moscow and St. Petersburg.