Russia says Crimea school blast that killed 18 was terrorism

A blast caused by an unidentified explosive device killed at least 10 and wounded more than 50 in the city of Kerch, near the eastern end of the peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

An explosion that killed at least 18 at a Crimean trade school Wednesday was terrorism, officials said.

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. (AFP)

The suspected attacker, a local resident who was a fourth-year student at the school, killed himself, Sergei Aksyonov, governor of Crimea, said on state television.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it has opened a terrorism probe in the case. The blast was caused by an improvised explosive device, Sergei Melikov, first deputy head of the National Guard, said, according to the state-run Tass news service.

The blast at the Kerch Polytechnic College wounded around 50 in the city of Kerch, near the eastern end of the peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, the Investigative Committee said. The shrapnel-filled bomb went off in the cafeteria before lunchtime, killing mostly adolescent students.

President Vladimir Putin ordered the Federal Security Service to investigate the explosion, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.

Kerch is the landing point and namesake of a bridge that opened earlier this year to connect Crimea to Russia. Security on the bridge was tightened after the attack, RIA Novosti reported.

Russia has suffered a number of deadly terror attacks in recent years, as well as violent assaults by students at schools.

The most recent major attack in Russia killed 14 people in a suicide bombing by an Islamic extremist in the St. Petersburg subway last year. Russia has nearly 50 Crimean natives on its list of terrorists, although some human rights groups claim that the inclusion of many of them is politically motivated.