Student leaves 17 dead in mass shooting at college in Crimea

A STUDENT has attacked a vocational college in Crimea in a shooting rampage that killed 17 other students and left more than 40 people wounded, according to Russian officials.

Comments by Sergei Aksyonov, the regional leader in Crimea, were the latest in a series of shifting explanations by Russian officials on what happened at Kerch Polytechnic College in the Black Sea city of Kerch.

Russian officials at first reported a gas explosion, then said an explosive device ripped through the college canteen in a suspected terrorist attack.

But witnesses reported at least some of the victims were killed in an attack by a gunman or gunmen.

Mr Aksyonov said that the student, a local man acting alone, killed himself after the attack.

The Investigative Committee, the nation’s top investigative agency, identified the attacker as Vladislav Roslyakov (18). It said he was caught on security cameras entering the college with a rifle and firing at students.

The committee said all the victims died of gunshot wounds, contrasting with previous statements by other officials saying they had wounds resulting from an explosion.

After the attack, officials declared a state of emergency on the Black Sea peninsula that they annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Military units were also deployed around the college.

Earlier in the day Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, A rescuer carries an injured victim of a blast at the college in the city of Kerch and (right) a woman lights a candle and lays flowers at the WWII Hero Cities Memorial to the city of Kerch in downtown Moscow

told reporters that officials were looking into a possible terrorist attack.

He said Mr Putin had instructed investigators and intelligence agencies to conduct a thorough probe and offered condolences to the families of the victims.

Witnesses did not speak of an

explosion but said one or more armed men attacked the school.

The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper quoted student Semyon Gavrilov, who said he fell asleep during a lecture and woke up to the sound of shooting. He said he looked out and saw a young man with a rifle shooting.

“I locked the door, hoping he wouldn’t hear me,” the paper quoted him as saying.

He said police arrived about 10 minutes later to evacuate the college and he saw dead bodies on the floor and charred walls.

Another student, Yuri Kerpek, told the RIA Novosti state news agency that the shooting went on for about 15 minutes.

Olga Grebennikova, director of the college, told KerchNet TV that men armed with automatic rifles burst into the college and “killed everyone they saw”. She said students and staff were among the victims.