MOSCOW (AFP) - Belarusian police said on Wednesday (April 6) they had arrested four men suspected of sabotaging railway equipment in the country that is acting as a rear base for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.

The interior ministry published video footage of bloodied and bruised men lying on the floor, saying that police had shot at them because they resisted arrest.

Gennady Kazakevich, a deputy interior minister, said in a video statement that three men were arrested on March 30 near the town of Bobruisk central Belarus.

He said the men in their late 20s damaged and set fire to electric relay boxes and signal boxes near the town of Osipovichi southeast of Minsk and also had a device designed to derail a train.

One man is now in hospital being treated for wounds, he said.

A fourth man was detained April 1 for a "similar crime" in the Borisov region northeast of Minsk, he added.

The man, shown lying on the ground with tourniquets and blood-stained bandages on both legs, is a convicted murderer, the deputy minister said.

In late March, Belarus state media reported that a Telegram channel called "Live. Community of railway workers of Belarus", which has been declared extremist, had posted instructions on destroying railway infrastructure.

The Telegram channel describes the men detained as partisans. It condemns Belarusian railway workers who take part in transporting Russian military equipment and weapons to the border with Ukraine.

Belarusian TV has also reported that the country's KGB security service foiled a plot by a group from Poland to carry out an attack on railway equipment.