Georgian rail bridge blast hits Azeri oil exports

BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan suspended oil exports through ports in western Georgia on Sunday after an explosion damaged a key rail bridge there.

Georgia accused Russian troops of blowing up a railway bridge west of the capital Tbilisi earlier in the day, saying its main east-west train link had been severed. Russia strongly denied any involvement.

"Transportation of oil and oil products in the western direction by railway has been suspended," Azerbaijan's state railway company said in a statement read out on television.

It gave the bridge explosion as the reason for the suspension. "The last shipment made by this railway contained 15 tanks," it said.

Another 72 oil tanks had been due to be sent to next-door Armenia before the railway link was cut off, it said.

The railway line runs from Tbilisi, through the Russian-occupied Georgian town of Gori, before splitting in three and running to the Black Sea ports of Poti and Batumi and southwest to just short of the Turkish border.

Azerbaijan is emerging as an important oil supplier to the West and its fast economic growth depends heavily on revenues from oil exports from the land-locked Caspian Sea.

Last week it suspended crude shipments via its key, BP-operated (BP.L) Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan link to Turkey after a fire damaged it.

Earlier this week BP closed the pipeline taking crude from Azerbaijan's Caspian port of Baku to the Georgian port of Supsa on the Black Sea, citing fighting between Georgian and Russian troops.