Bomb in Crimean high school kills 13, wounds 50, say Russian authorities

MOSCOW — At least 13 people, mostly teenagers, were killed and 50 more wounded when an explosive device rocked a high school in Crimea on Wednesday, Russia’s investigative committee said. 

Russia’s National Guard has called the explosion an act of terrorism, while the investigative committee has opened a terrorism probe.

“The majority of them are teenagers,” the committee said in a statement, adding that the metallic device was planted in the school’s cafeteria.

Eyewitnesses at the school, attended by children between the ages of 14 and 18, said gunmen fired into the air before the explosion, Russian media reported. 

“There are lots of wounded, we started to evacuate people through the windows. People are panicking,” the Russian Telegram news service Mash cited an unnamed student as saying. 

The attack took place in Kerch, a city on the east of Crimea, a peninsula Russia-annexed from Ukraine four years ago. Kerch is also where a new Kremlin-financed bridge connects Crimea to Russia. 

The blast is the first fatal attack on the territory of Russia since a suicide bomber killed 16 people on the St. Petersburg metro in April last year. No group claimed responsibility for that attack, but Russian security forces said it was the work of an Islamist radical.

Natalia Abbakumova contributed reporting

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