MOSCOW: A Russian official said a student attacked a vocational college Wednesday in Crimea, a rampage that killed 17 other students and left more than 40 people wounded, before killing himself.
The preliminary examination of the bodies of the victims indicates that they died of gunshot wounds. Nobody was killed by the blast that rocked the college earlier on Wednesday, the Investigative Committee said.
Russian officials at first reported a gas explosion, then said an explosive device ripped through the college canteen at lunchtime in a suspected terrorist attack.
Olga Grebennikova, the school’s director, described a bloody scene, saying a gunman ran around the school and “killed anyone they could find”.
Many of the victims from Wednesday’s attacks were teenage students who suffered shrapnel and bullet wounds.Officials said initial examinations suggested all the victims died of gunshot wounds, but some reports speak of shrapnel injuries.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, prompting international condemnation and Western sanctions, but since then there have been no major outbreaks of violence there.
Russia’s national investigative agency said it believes a student at the college was responsible for at least the shooting. It said that student shot several people before killing himself.
National guard soldiers were deployed and schools and pre-schools evacuated in the city.The incident was earlier described as a “terrorist act”, but Russia’s investigative committee reclassified it as “mass murder”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a meeting in the southern Russian resort of Sochi with his Egyptian counterpart, declared a moment’s silence for the victims.
