{"id":18848,"date":"2018-10-17T14:26:22","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T14:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18848"},"modified":"2018-10-17T14:26:22","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T14:26:22","slug":"school-in-russian-annexed-crimea-hit-by-deadly-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18848","title":{"rendered":"School in Russian-annexed Crimea hit by deadly attack"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A student has attacked a vocational college\u00a0in the Russian-annexed peninsula\u00a0<\/span>Crimea<\/a>, killing at least 17 people before killing himself, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee.<\/p>\n

The committee said CCTV footage showed 18-year-old student Vladislav Roslyakov entering Kerch Polytechnic College\u00a0with a rifle on Wednesday and firing at students.<\/p>\n

“Currently, there are 17 known deaths. The initial inspection of the bodies suggests that they died from gunshot wounds,” the committee said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The incident in Kerch, a city of 147,000 people, was initially reported as a gas explosion and a possible “terrorist” attack. But the committee later said it was a case of mass murder.<\/p>\n

More than 40 people were injured in the attack.<\/p>\n

Anastasia Yenshina, a 15-year-old student at the college, said she was in a toilet on the ground floor of the building with some friends when she heard the sound of an explosion.<\/p>\n

“I came out and there was dust and smoke, I couldn’t understand, I’d been deafened,” she told Reuters news agency. \u00a0<\/p>\n

“Everyone started running … I saw a girl lying there. There was a child who was being helped to walk because he could not move on his own. The wall was covered in blood.<\/p>\n

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WATCH: Ukraine’s Orthodox Church is now independent of Russia (2:45)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

“Everyone was scared. People were crying.”<\/p>\n

‘Tragic event’<\/h2>\n

Olga Grebennikova, director of the vocational college, told KerchNet TV that men armed with automatic rifles burst into the college and “killed everyone they saw”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Grebennikova, who said she had left the grounds shortly before the attack occurred, said students and staff were among victims.<\/p>\n

The local Crimean government announced three days of mourning following the incident and the Kremlin announced it would investigate the attack.<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin deplored the attack as a “tragic event” and offered condolences to the victims’ families at a news conference in Sochi.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Russia<\/a> annexed the peninsula in March 2014, after a referendum in which the population of Crimea chose to become part of Russia.<\/p>\n

The annexation followed the overthrow of pro-Russian Ukrainian President\u00a0Viktor Yanukovich<\/a>\u00a0after weeks of protests that descended into a violent conflict.<\/p>\n

Later pro-Russian separatists took over parts of Donbass in southeastern Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since then, fighting in that region has killed more than 13,000 people, including about 3,000 civilians.<\/p>\n

The so-called Minsk agreements – brokered by Germany and France and signed by Russia and Ukraine in 2015 – have slowed the conflict, but sporadic fighting continues.<\/p>\n

Over the past few years, Russian security agencies have arrested several Ukrainians accused of plotting terror attacks in Crimea, but no attacks have occurred.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A student has attacked a vocational college\u00a0in the Russian-annexed peninsula\u00a0Crimea, killing at least 17 people before killing himself, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee. The committee said CCTV footage showed 18-year-old student Vladislav Roslyakov entering Kerch Polytechnic College\u00a0with a rifle on Wednesday and firing at students. “Currently, there are 17 known deaths. The initial inspection of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}