Eighteen people are confirmed dead and dozens more have been wounded by an explosion at a college in the Black Sea region of Crimea, close to where a bridge was built to connect the peninsula with Russia after Russia annexed the region in 2014.
Although the blast was initially thought to be a gas explosion, Reuters now reports that officials have confirmed there was at least one attacker who set off a bomb in the cafeteria, then made his way through the building, shooting at random. Most of the victims were students.
The incident is being treated as a terrorist attack, according to law enforcement officials.
Head of the Russian-backed administration in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said the main suspect is a male student at the college, and said he has taken his own life.
“There are bodies everywhere, children’s bodies everywhere,” the college’s director, Olga Grebnnikova, told Crimea media outlets. “It was a real act of terrorism. They burst in five or 10 minutes after I’d left. They blew up everything in the hall, glass was flying.”
There have been no outbreaks of violence in the area of Kersh, where the attack took place, in the past four years since it was annexed.
Victims have been taken to the hospital, and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said military planes were readying to evacuate wounded and take them to military hospital facilities, if necessary.
