At least 19 dead and scores wounded in ‘armed rampage’ that may have involved bombs

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.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 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.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 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.