Crimea college attack - live updates: Deadly bombing before gunman ‘kills everyone he could find’
'Home-made' device was rigged with shrapnel, investigators say
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Your support makes all the difference.Russia's top investigative agency is probing a bomb that killed at least 18 people at a vocational college in Crimea, the province Russia annexed in 2014.
The explosion in a cafeteria in the city of Kerch injured another 50 or more people before a lone gunman went on a rampage, authorities said. Witness accounts differed with some claiming to have seen multiple attackers.
Sergei Melikov, a deputy chief of the Russian National Guard, said the explosive device was home-made and the Investigative Committee, the nation’s most senior investigative agency, said the device had been rigged with shrapnel.
Explosives experts were inspecting the college building for other possible bombs, according to Anti-Terrorism Committee spokesman Andrei Przhezdomsky.
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that officials are looking into a possible terrorist attack. He did not elaborate. Mr Peskov said Mr Putin had instructed investigators and intelligence agencies to conduct a thorough probe and offered condolences to the families of the victims.
Additional reporting by agencies
Russian officials have said the blast from an explosive device killed at least 13 people and injured at least 50 others - and called it a potential terror attack.
Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee said the blast at the college in the city of Kerch in eastern Crimea was caused by an unidentified explosive device.
Gunmen also reportedly stalked the halls of the college following the blast.
Olga Grebennikova, director of the vocational institution, told KerchNet TV that men armed with automatic rifles had burst into the college and "killed everyone they saw". She said students and staff were among victims.
The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper quoted student Semyon Gavrilov as saying he fell asleep during a lecture and woke up to the sound of shooting. He said he looked out and saw a young man with a rifle shooting at people.
"I locked the door, hoping he wouldn't hear me," the paper quoted Mr Gavrilov as saying.
This via our Moscow correspondent Oliver Carroll:
Yekaterina Keizo, a journalist working for local media Kerch FM, told The Independent that witnesses spoke of two men entering the building: "One of them blew himself up, and the other left the school."
According to Sergei Aksyonov, head of the Crimean authority, the attack was carried out by a 22-year-old student, who then killed himself. Mash, a social media channel associated with the police, identified the student as Vladislav Roslyakov.
The TASS news agency is reporting that Russia's anti-terrorism committee has announced the body of a suspect has been found inside the college.
And the death toll has risen to 18, according to Sergei Aksyonov who was quoted by the Interfax news agency.
This story, by Oliver Carroll, is also being updated as we get more information.
The motives behind the Crimea attack are being "carefully studied", Vladimir Putin has said.
Russia's national anti-terror committee has said there may have been more than one attacker. It is conducting a search for those behind the bombing, it said.
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