Crimea Attack: Teenage Girl Becomes 20th College Victim

Students have been left with horrific injuries after a nail bomb went off at a college in Crimea and a gunman opened fire with a rifle.

The death toll rose to 20 on Thursday when a teenage girl died of her wounds aboard an emergency helicopter.

Russia named the killer as Vladislav Roslyakov, 18, who shot himself after the rampage at Kerch technical college.

Fifteen students and five teachers died. Ten victims are in intensive care. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

Some victims have had limbs amputated and the bomb blast injured 74 in total, Russian media report.

Crimea’s Russian-backed leader, Sergei Aksyonov, said on Thursday that the gunman had acted alone but must have had help in advance. “The way me and my colleagues see it, the preparations could not have been done by this villain on his own,” he said.

‘People have lost limbs’

A huge nail-bomb blast ripped through the college’s cafeteria, before the killer stormed through the building, shooting people at close range with a hunting rifle.

Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said the explosion from a home-made device had showered people with shrapnel. “Some victims’ internal organs were ruptured, we’re finding washers and ball bearings in their livers, intestines, blood vessels.”

“Limbs have been amputated – people have lost feet and shins,” she said.

Some of the critically injured were being transferred to hospitals as far away as Moscow.

The authorities in Crimea declared three days of mourning, and flowers are being left at a makeshift shrine at the scene.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine was condemned by many Western powers. It marked the start of a conflict pitting Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine against Ukrainian government forces.

What happened at the college?

The perpetrator is said to have run from room to room as he fired. Minutes earlier he had left a rucksack containing the nail-bomb in the cafeteria on the ground floor and detonated it remotely, Russian Channel One TV reported.

Photos later emerged in Russian media purportedly showing his body in the college library.

The TV report described a scene of devastation and mass panic after the blast. It said doors and windows were shattered in the entrance hall and on the first floor, above the cafeteria. Some students leapt out of the building from a height of five metres (16.4ft).

Investigators later said they found a second explosive device among the gunman’s possessions and that it had been disarmed.

BBC Russian spoke to witnesses, including Igor Zakharevsky, who was in the canteen when the gunman struck.

“I was at the epicentre of the first explosion, at the entrance, near the buffet,” he said.

“I was in complete shock and one of my classmates started pulling me away. Then I heard several shots at intervals of two or three seconds. After a while there was another explosion.”

A businessman near the college described hearing an explosion and seeing a large window shatter.

The incident was earlier described as a “terrorist act”, but Russia’s investigative committee later reclassified it as “mass murder”.

President Vladimir Putin said the attack was a “tragic event” and expressed condolences to the victims’ relatives.

Spate of attacks

Until now, if you had told people in Crimea there had been a mass school shooting, most would have thought you were talking about the United States. Now all that has changed.

The shooting spree in the Kerch Polytechnic has left the peninsula, annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, in shock. But should it come as such a surprise?

Today’s Russian papers on the massacre at Kerch Polytechnic:

“The deadliest shooting in modern Russian history.”

“Death enters the gates of Crimea.”

“Black Sea of Tears”

“We are doomed to see a repetition.”

Click for a full press review. pic.twitter.com/9gE5HFXt33

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) October 18, 2018

There have been five attacks in schools in Russia this year where a number of children were injured.

In Kerch, questions are already being asked: how did Vladislav Roslyakov manage to obtain a licence for a hunting weapon? And how was he able to launch such a deadly attack on his college?

Source: BBC