Russia is investigating whether a student who killed 20 people at the "mass murder" of a Crimean college acted alone

The death toll from college shooting and a Crimean bomb attack has been raised to 20, according to a senior Crimean official who said the authorities were looking for accomplices who might have helped a student perpetrate the slaughter.

At least 42 injured are still hospitalized, including six in critical condition, according to authorities in the Black Sea town of Kerch, where the attack occurred on Wednesday.

Vladislav Rosylakov, an 18-year-old student, was identified by the police as the attacker. Russian authorities had said that Roslyakov had acted alone in school, but on Thursday, the head of the Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, said that he thought the student had to receive from him. help to prepare for the attack.

"In college he acted alone, but the task is to determine who prepared for this crime," Aksyonov told reporters at the scene of the attack. "It would not have been possible, in my opinion, to conduct such prepared events alone."

The investigators are still trying to determine Roslyakov's motive and have suggested treating it as a shooting in a school similar to that in the United States. It was unclear to what extent the Russian forces of order shared Aksyonov 's assessment.

Russian authorities initially thought that the shooting in schools was a terrorist attack before reclassifying it as "mass murder" after Roslyakov's identification. Security images showed him entering Kerch Polytechnic College, where he was a fourth-year student, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and carrying bags, police said, filled with homemade grenades.

According to witnesses, Roslyakov allegedly started throwing explosives into classrooms and opened fire. Police said that a bomb filled with metal objects that had been placed in the school had also exploded. Roslyakov was killed at school after police arrived about 10 to 15 minutes later, police said.

The precise details of the attack remain unclear. Some stories have described the explosion of a big bomb, while others have described only shots and grenades. Images of the scene published in the Russian media showed a bag found at school filled with seemingly improvised explosives. The Russian National Counter-Terrorism Committee said that it had defused a second bomb at school on Wednesday.

Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said most of those killed were shot, but doctors also removed metal objects from people wounded by what she called a powerful bomb. .

"The children's muscles are all" chopped ", basically, with small pieces of metal," Skvortsova told reporters in Kerch, "We found nuts and metal balls in the liver, intestines and blood vessels of those whose internal organs have been torn.This is the power of the explosion, "she said, pointing out that others had lost lower limbs.

Rolyakov's friends and relatives, speaking to Russian and foreign media, described him as a quiet and isolated young man from a troubled and fascinated background of firearms.

The leading Russian newspaper, Izvestia, told a source close to the investigation that Roslyakov's father had told the police, during his interrogation, that his son had recently cut off contact with one of his close friends and that he was aware of his son's interest in weapons.

Firearms laws are strict in Russia and civilians are only allowed to own shotguns and shotguns, and must be subjected to a background check. Roslyakov had obtained his firearms license just two months ago, local officials said. Images of the security camera broadcast by the Russian channel Ren-TV showed him buying shotgun cartridges four days before the shooting.

Ordinary Russians and authorities are struggling to cope with the attack in one part of the world where shootings in schools are virtually unheard of. Residents of Crimea and a war memorial dedicated to Kerch near the Kremlin in Moscow have laid red mourning flowers and stuffed toys in makeshift sanctuaries.

The aftermath of the shooting also takes place in the unusual political context of Crimea. Russia took control of Crimea in 2014 using anonymous troops and routinely accused Ukraine of sending saboteurs to blow up infrastructure on the peninsula.

Some in Russia have suggested that the Kerch attack could have links with Ukraine, although there is no evidence so far.

In one of the leading Russian newspapers, Kommersant, anonymous security officials said the investigators were investigating whether Roslyakov had ties to Ukrainian nationalist groups. in Sochi to place a bomb at his school.

The authorities, however, seem to be grappling with a phenomenon that is very familiar in the United States, but almost unknown in Russia: shootings in schools.

Wednesday's attack was the most lethal act of violence in a Russian school since the Beslan terrorist attack in 2004, when 333 people, many of them children, died after the capture of 39, a school by Chechen fighters.

In Crimea, officials announced that they would examine security measures in schools. On Thursday, an armed riot police was temporarily deployed to guard all schools on the peninsula.

At a forum in Sochi, President Vladimir Putin told the audience that Kerch's shooting was "the result of globalization".

"It all started with these tragic events in American schools," said Putin. "Young people with unstable minds create false heroes, which means that we do not create interesting, interesting and healthy content for young people, they only have this heroism of substitution and that leads to these kinds of tragedies. . "