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At least 10 people were killed and many others injured in the bomb blast in a college in Crimea, a witness said on local television that it was also acting of an attack perpetrated by at least one armed man.
The Russian national anti-terrorist committee, a government body, said the explosion in a polytechnic school was caused by an "unidentified explosive device," according to the Russian news agency Tass.
The explosion took place in the city of Kerch, which is the point of entry of a new 19 km bridge connecting the Crimea to Russia.
On local television, the college chief described an armed assault with assailants shooting down students and teachers, leaving bodies scattered throughout the building. At least one attacker blew himself up, said the director of the school.
"It was a real terrorist attack, as in Beslan," school principal Olga Grebennikova said of the 2004 terrorist attack that killed more than 330 people.
The Russian investigating committee described the attack as a terrorist attack and said the explosive device was equipped with metal strips used as shards during the explosion.
"There are a lot of bodies, a lot of children's bodies," she said in the video, which was posted on the KerchNet news site. The attackers "used automatic rifles, I do not know what they were, on the second floor, they opened offices and killed everything they could find".
"I would be a corpse too," she said. "Because all my people were shot. Children and employees were killed.
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The committee said the initial estimates suggested that 10 people had been killed and more than 50 injured in the blast that occurred in the college cafeteria.
According to reports from witnesses quoted by the local media, there may have been shooting and an attempt to take hostages before the explosion. The police have not commented on the incident so far. Russian media first reported the explosion as a result of a gas explosion.
The explosion will be subject to scrutiny by the Russian authorities. Crimea was annexed by Russia to Ukraine in 2014, and ensuring the security of the peninsula is a priority for Moscow.
