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Kerch (AFP)

A 15-year-old boy was the youngest to die when a teenage gunman attacked his college in the Crimean city of Kerch, while at least nine of the dead were minors, authorities said.

The city of Kerch published a list Thursday of the 19 identified dead in the morning.

The youngest of them, Sergei Stepanenko, was 15.

One of the girls who died, 16-year-old Darya Chegerest, known as "Dasha", "tried to help others" as the attack unfolded but was killed, her fellow first-year student Viktoria Voiko told AFP.

An unnamed student told the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid she saw Chegerest die.

"I saw my friend Dasha get killed. She was running next to me, and then she fell and wasn't breathing any more," said the student who was in a state of hysteria.

- Ball bearing bomb -

Relatives of another of the named dead, 16-year-old Alina Kerova, had been desperately searching for her the day before, knowing that she was in the building at the time, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

Kerova's best friend, 17-year-old Viktoria Demchuk, is among the wounded, Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote. Her social media page shows a smiling girl with long dark hair.

Among the adult dead was a maths teacher at the college, 57-year-old Svetlana Baklanova, and her 26-year-old daughter Anastasia Baklanova who also worked at the college, handling finance and tax issues, reported Moskovsky Komsomolets daily.

City authorities published a list of 42 wounded, saying that two more had not been identified.

Health minister Veronika Skvortsova told journalists that most of those who died suffered gunshot wounds.

Many of those hospitalised were injured by an explosion that blasted metal ball bearings and other items into their bodies, ripping into organs.

She said the explosion made "mincemeat" of the victims and several had limbs amputated.

- Football fans -

Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that two of the students who were injured are keen football fans, Nikolai Krutko and Valentin Kondrashechkin, both 18. It published a picture of them smiling at a match.

Krutko was shot in the shoulder and jaw and has shrapnel in his head, it reported.

One of the wounded, 16-year-old Natalya Kalinichenko, had her leg blown off, her friends told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

The grandmother and aunt of one of the wounded, a 16-year-old boy named only as Nikolai, told RIA Novosti state news agency that the second-year student was on a mechanics course and hopes to work in a rail or trolleybus depot.

He was wounded in the leg and stomach but was conscious and they said they were optimistic for his recovery.

© 2018 AFP