Moscow mayor fires metro chief after fatal accident

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin stands near flowers left in memory of victims of Tuesday's accident, in which three carriages derailed on a train during morning rush hour, at the entrance to a metro station in Moscow July 16, 2014. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The mayor of Moscow has dismissed the head of the Russian capital's metro network following an accident that killed at least 22 people, the mayor's office said on Tuesday. More than 150 people were also injured in the accident on July 15, in which three carriages derailed on a train during the morning rush hour. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin replaced Ivan Besedin, who had run the metro since February 2011, with Dmitry Pegov, a former official at a subsidiary of state-controlled Russian Railways. Russian state investigators have detained four Moscow metro workers suspected of safety breaches but Besedin was not among them. The investigators put the death toll at 22. The accident is the worst in years on Moscow's metro, one of the world's busiest subway networks, and highlights concerns about Russia's patchy transport safety record. There was no sign that the incident was caused by an militant attack. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Editing by Timothy Heritage)