There were conflicting reports about what took place. Russia’s anti-terrorism committee initially said an explosive device was to blame for the attack on the vocational high school, attended by adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19. It said a bomb was planted in the cafeteria.<doc-sep>Rescuers carry an injured victim of a blast at at a college in the city of Kerch on October 17, 2018. Thirteen people were killed and 50 more wounded, most of them teenagers, after a blast tore into a college canteen in Russian-annexed Crimea in what Moscow called a 'terrorist' attack. "This is a clearly a crime," he said. "The motives will be carefully investigated." 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. Pupils and staff described scenes of mayhem as panicked pupils tried to flee the building. They said the attack had started with an explosion, followed by more blasts, and a hail of gunfire. Many of the victims from Wednesday's attacks were teenage students who suffered shrapnel and bullet wounds. 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. There were no immediate clues as to his motive in mounting such an attack, which recalled similar shooting sprees carried out by students in U.S. schools. Eighteen-year-old Vladislav Roslyakov turned up at the college in the city of Kerch on Wednesday afternoon carrying a firearm and then began shooting, investigators said. His body was later found in the college with what they said were self-inflicted gunshot wounds. At least 17 people were killed and dozens injured at a college in the Black Sea region of Crimea on Wednesday when a student went through the building shooting at fellow pupils before killing himself, Russian law enforcement officials said. The director of the school, Olga Grebennikova, described the scene that she encountered when she entered the college building after the attack. "There are bodies everywhere, children's bodies everywhere. 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," Grebennikova told Crimean media outlets. "They then ran about throwing some kind of explosives around, and then ran around the second floor with guns, opened the office doors, and killed anyone they could find." Soon after the attack, Russian officials said they were investigating the possibility that it was terrorism. Troops with armoured personnel carriers were sent to the scene. Local parents were told to collect their children from the city's schools and kindergartens for their safety. However, the Investigative Committee, the state body that investigates major crimes, said later that it was re-classifying the case from terrorism to mass murder. Officials had previously given the death toll as 18, but the Committee revised that to 17 killed. An employee at Kerch's hospital said dozens of people were being treated for their injuries in the emergency room and in the operating theatre. Anastasia Yenshina, a 15-year-old student at the college, said she was in a toilet on the ground floor of the building with some friends when she heard the sound of an explosion. "I came out and there was dust and smoke, I couldn't understand, I'd been deafened," she told Reuters. "Everyone started running. I did not know what to do. Then they told us to leave the building through the gymnasium." "Everyone ran there... I saw a girl lying there. There was a child who was being helped to walk because he could not move on his own. The wall was covered in blood. Then everyone started to climb over the fence, and we could still hear explosions. Everyone was scared. People were crying." Photographs from the scene of the blast showed that the ground floor windows of the two-storey building had been blown out, and that debris was lying on the floor outside. Emergency services teams could be seen in the photographs carrying wounded people from the building on makeshift stretchers and loading them on to buses and ambulances. A second pupil at the college, who gave his name as Sergei, said he had taken a few steps out of the building into the street when the first blast went off. He was hit by debris from the blast and injured in the leg. Sergei, 15, told Reuters he ran to another building, but said he could hear more explosions going off every few seconds. He took cover and after the attack was over, he was taken to hospital in an ambulance. "I arrived at the hospital, the scene there was awful. They're bringing in people all covered in blood, some with arms missing, some with legs missing."<doc-sep>Russian authorities say the death toll in a shooting rampage at a technical school in Ukraine's Moscow-annexed Crimea region has risen to 21, including the suspected shooter. The Russia-imposed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, told reporters on October 18 in the Crimean city of Kerch, where the attack took place a day earlier, that a 16-year-old girl heavily injured in the shooting died in the regional capital, Simferopol, where she was waiting to be airlifted to Moscow for treatment. Russian media reports quoted unnamed officials of the Health Ministry as saying that the girl sustained very serious wounds and it was impossible to save her. Russian investigators identified the suspected shooter as Vladislav Roslyakov, an 18-year-old student at the technical college, and said he committed suicide. In the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the attack a "result of globalization" and said that adults are failing to offer young people an alternative to an outburst of violence. Kerch Deputy Mayor Dilyaver Melgaziyev said earlier that all the victims of the attack had been identified, adding that five of them were college employees and the rest were students, of whom seven were younger than 18. Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said earlier that a total of 70 people were wounded in the attack, with several in critical condition being airlifted to top Russian hospitals for surgery. Dozens more remain hospitalized in Kerch. Aksyonov said earlier that the first victim will be buried later on October 18. Authorities and eyewitnesses say the teenager walked calmly through the Kerch polytechnic school shooting people seemingly indiscriminately with a shotgun before turning it on himself. Aksyonov described Roslyakov, a fourth-year student, as a shy boy who had no known friends and a good record in school. "What he published on his [social media] account was not open to the public. Access to his account was restricted; he didn't have any friends," Aksyonov told Rossia-24 television. "He wasn't aggressive, he was rather timid," Aksyonov said, speculating that Roslyakov might have "watched some movies" that inspired him to go on the shooting spree. "He was walking around and shooting students and teachers in cold blood," Aksyonov said. The announcement that the shooter was a student who acted alone came after hours of shifting explanations as to what happened at the school, with investigators initially saying it might have been a terrorist attack. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the authorities declared an emergency in Crimea and Russia sent National Guard troops to protect schools and a new 19-kilometer bridge connecting Crimea with Russia. Speaking at a conference in Sochi on October 18, Putin said that the attack was a continuation of an American trend. "It all started with the well-known tragic events...at schools in the United States," he said, referring to numerous schools shootings that have occurred there since the 1990s. Putin said that such attacks showed that adults were failing to "fast-changing realities" in which unstable young people were creating "fake heroes" and "reaching out for a surrogate for heroism." The attack in Kerch was the greatest loss of life in school violence in Russia since the Beslan attack by Chechen separatists in September 2004, in which 333 people -- many of them children -- were killed during a three-day siege. While such school shootings are rare in Ukraine and Russia, which seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, the bloodbath raised questions about school security. Reports said the Kerch school had only a front desk with no security guards. Lawmakers in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada and Russia's State Duma separately commemorated the victims with a minute of silence on October 18. Aksyonov said on October 18 that although the perpetrator "certainly was alone when killing people in the college, but he could not have been able to prepare the rampage by himself only," adding that investigators were looking for possible accomplices. His statement came after some witnesses said more than one person was involved, with one saying a bomb with shrapnel that went off in the school lunchroom during the siege was set off by a second attacker. Earlier, Aksyonov said Roslyakov made the bomb himself and set it off while using a shotgun he recently acquired and 150 cartridges he bought just a few days ago to conduct his deadly shooting spree. Aksyonov said Roslyakov had recently received a permit to own the shotgun after passing routine background checks. With reporting by AP, TASS, Interfax, UNIAN, Rossia-24, Christopher Miller in Kyiv, RFE/RL's Russian Service, the Crimean desk of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, RIA Novosti, Mediazona, Dozhd, and Reuters<doc-sep>
At least 19 people have been killed and almost 40 wounded in a shooting carried out by a student at a vocational college in Crimea. Several witnesses described a gunman stalking the halls and firing at classmates and teachers until he ran out of ammunition. A bomb may also have been detonated during the attack, although Russian government agencies provided conflicting reports. Sappers said they later disarmed several more explosive devices at the college. The attacker was identified as Vladislav Roslyakov, 18, a student of the Kerch polytechnic college, Sergei Aksyonov, Crimea’s regional head announced on television. Roslyakov, who carried a shotgun or rifle, killed himself at the site of the attack. The motive behind the attack was not immediately made public, although reports in Russian media said he had told acquaintances he was angry at his teachers and wanted to “get revenge”. Stills from a video camera showed that he wore black pants and a white T-shirt, clothing that resembled the outfit worn by the Columbine high school attacker Eric Harris. The 1999 high school massacre has led to dozens of copycat attacks and plots in the US and abroad, including a foiled plot by two 14-year-old boys at a North Yorkshire school last year. Such school shootings are rare in Russia, in part because rifles and handguns are hard to acquire. The National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC), a government body, said an “unidentified explosive device” had detonated at the polytechnic college, and that it bore metal strips that acted as shrapnel. But the bodies of those killed mostly had gunshot wounds, the country’s Investigative Committee said. The NAC also said there could have been more than one attacker. Law enforcement officers at the site of a bomb blast at the college. Photograph: Yekaterina Keizo/TASS The assault took place in the city of Kerch, from where a new 12-mile (19km) bridge links Crimea to Russia. The location of the attack will heighten scrutiny from Russian authorities, who are already concerned about terrorist attacks. Crimea was annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, and providing security to the peninsula has been a priority for Moscow. Some politicians initially suggested that the Ukrainian government was behind the attack, although as more information emerged about the attacker, the dominant version became a disaffected student angry at his school. Vladimir Putin, who is in the southern Russian city of Sochi with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, issued condolences to the families of those killed and ordered a full investigation. Ukraine said it had stepped up security on the border with Crimea. Roslyakov had recently acquired a hunting licence, a regional official said, and may have legally owned his weapon. A local media outlet said that he had recently bought a 12-gauge shotgun and 150 shells, although that could not be confirmed. On local television, the head of the college described an armed rampage with attackers gunning down pupils and teachers, leaving bodies strewn throughout the building. “It was a real terrorist attack, like in Beslan,” the school’s director, Olga Grebennikova, said, referring to the 2004 attack by Islamist militants at a school that left more than 330 dead. The Investigative Committee initially declared the Kerch assault a terrorist attack, but later reclassified it as a “mass killing”. Russian media at first reported the blast as the result of a gas explosion. Emergency workers at the scene. Photograph: Yekaterina Keizo/Tass “There are a lot of bodies, a lot of bodies of children,” Grebennikova said in a video posted to the news site KerchNet. The attacker “ran with automatic rifles, I don’t know what they were, on the second floor, opening offices and killing everyone they could find”. “I would also be a corpse,” she said. “Because all of my people were shot to death. Kids and employees were killed.” The most recent mass casualty attack in Russia took place in April 2017, when a naturalised Russian citizen from Kyrgyzstan detonated a bomb in the St Petersburg metro, killing 16 people including himself. Crimea will hold a three-day mourning period for those killed in the attack. Russian authorities dispatched 12 doctors to the peninsula and announced plans to bring some of the wounded to elite Moscow hospitals for treatment. The government has also promised free medical care to the wounded and financial support to families of the dead.