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Russian-imposed Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov says suspected attacker at college in Kerch was a 22-year-old student or former student there and has killed himself. He says the death toll is 18. More to follow...
LATEST from our reporting:
Russian authorities say a bomb filled with shrapnel exploded at a college in the Crimean city of Kerch, killing 13 people and injuring dozens in what investigators are treating as a terrorist act.
The blast ripped through the cafeteria at a polytechnic college in the city on the eastern end of the peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said.
State news agencies cited the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAK) as saying it was caused by an unidentified explosive device, and Petrenko said the bomb was packed with metal objects.
"At the moment, we know of 13 dead and about 50 injured, most of them teenagers," Petrenko said, adding that casualty figures were being checked. Students at colleges in Russia are usually about 14-17 years old.
Several news reports and a video purporting to show the distraught director of the college indicated that assailants fired guns in addition to setting off explosives, and depicted a scene of carnage at the college.
The incident is likely to increase tension between Russia and Ukraine, which Moscow has accused in the past of seeking to carry out acts of sabotage in Crimea.
The regional Emergency Situations Ministry declared a state of state of emergency in Crimea and said security was being increased. A three-day mourning period was announced by the Russian authorities who control the Black Sea peninsula.
In a video posted on the Internet, a woman identified as the director of the college, Olga Grebennikova, says there were "many corpses, many corpses of children" and calls it "a real terrorist act."
LATEST from our reporting:
In a video posted on the Internet, a woman identified as the director of the college, Olga Grebennikova, says there were "many corpses, many corpses of children" and calls it "a real terrorist act."
The woman, speaking on a mobile phone, says that shortly after she left the college for a meeting elsewhere, assailants attacked the school, throwing explosive devices and firing guns.
"They ran up to the second floor with automatic rifles -- I don't know with what -- and opened doors...and killed everyone they could find," she said. She said students and faculty were among the dead.
The authenticity of the video could not immediately be independently confirmed.
President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russian authorities were considering terrorism as a possible motive.
Putin voiced condolences to victims and their loved ones and ordered the authorities to evacuate badly injured victims by air to "leading" hospitals in Moscow and other cities, Peskov said.
Video from a local media outlet showed ambulance crews helping victims after a blast which Russia said was caused by an explosive device. Initial reports said 10 people were feared dead and dozens injured by the blast in Kerch, Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
