While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the euphoria in Crimea over Russia’s 2014 annexation has long since turned to resentment.
MOSCOW — An explosive device packed with metal fragments detonated on Wednesday at a technical college in the small town of Kerch on the Crimean peninsula, killing at least 13 people and injuring 50, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism committee reported.
“An unidentified bomb has exploded in Kerch,” said Andrei Przhezdomsky, the spokesman for the committee. Television pictures from the site of the explosion, Kerch Polytechnic College, showed it swarming with ambulances to transport the wounded to the hospital.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, confirmed the explosion and said it was being investigated as a possible terrorist attack.
The bomb exploded in the school’s cafeteria, said the committee’s spokeswoman, Svetlana Petrenko, who added that most of the victims were students.
Kerch, on the eastern end of Crimea, is the landing point for the Kerch Bridge, aa a $7 billion, 12-mile-long link that Mr. Putin inaugurated last May. The construction, opposed by Ukraine, was freighted with symbolism as it provided a physical link to Russia, which annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
The euphoria that accompanied Russia’s annexation has long since faded into resentment, even among the pro-Russian majority. The annexation was always anathema to the indigenous Tatars, who have complained bitterly in recent years of widespread discrimination, including the shuttering of their local legislature and their independent media.
In the process of suppressing the critics, Russia meted out lengthy jail sentences to some arrested on terrorism charges and drove many others to seek refuge in neighboring Ukraine.
The explosion also comes at a time of heightened tension between Russia and Ukraine over Kiev’s effort to create an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church after more than 300 years under the dominion of the Russian Orthodox Church.
