Crimea mourns shooting victims
KERCH: Mourners wept at a ceremony in Crimea held for the 20 people killed in a school shooting dubbed the “Russian Columbine”, the worst massacre of its kind in the country’s history.
Two days before, 18-year-old Vladislav Roslyakov opened fire on his technical college in the city of Kerch before killing himself.
More than 40 others were injured in the attack.
“We don’t want to talk, we want to weep. The history of Crimea will be divided in two – before and after Oct 17,” the leader of the Moscowannexed peninsula, Sergei Aksyonov, told a crowd of hundreds at Kerch’s central square.
“We need to be strong, we need to be brave,” he said yesterday.
On the city’s Lenin Square, tables covered in red cloth had been set up opposite a statue of the Soviet leader, each one bearing a photograph of a victim.
Aksyonov placed a red rose in front of each coffin at the ceremony, which was set to continue in a procession to the city’s new cemetery.
Hundreds of students from the technical college where the attack took place were at the square, including an injured young woman in a wheelchair.
Security has been stepped up in the city of 150,000, which sits in the far east of Crimea and is where a recently-opened bridge links the Russian mainland to its newly annexed territory. All central roads have been closed.
Of those injured in the attack, a number remained in a “very serious condition”, Russian health minister Veronika Skvortsova said.
Many of those hospitalised were injured by an explosion that blasted metal ball bearings and other items into their bodies.
Six have been transferred to the Russian capital for further treatment, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
On Thursday, a girl claiming to be Roslyakov’s ex-girlfriend told media he had spoken of taking revenge for bullying.
President Vladimir Putin meanwhile said the killing was the “result of globalisation” and the continuation of a trend that had begun in the US. — AFP