A Russian couple were killed and their daughter was wounded on Monday in what Moscow said was a Ukrainian attack as they drove across the Crimean Bridge at night for what they hoped would be a family holiday on Crimea’s Black Sea coast.
It was not immediately clear how the bridge, one of President Vladimir Putin’s prestige projects, was attacked but video posted on social media showed the family’s car smashed, with bloodied bodies contorted and silent.
The girl was named as 14-year-old Angelina. Her parents, Alexei and Nataliya, both died.
The young girl was taken to intensive care in a hospital in the Russian city of Temryuk, RIA Novosti quoted the hospital’s representatives as saying.
“We all saw with you on a video on the Internet a damaged car with Belgorod numbers. What information is available at the moment: a girl was injured,” Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging app.
“The hardest thing is that her parents died, dad and mum.”
The Russian-installed head of Crimea’s parliament said on Monday that Ukraine was behind an incident, the state RIA news agency reported.
He was quoted as saying that the bridge had been attacked by what he called Ukraine’s “terrorist regime” and that the railway part of the bridge was not damaged.
Traffic stopped on the bridge
Traffic was stopped at the Russian-built Crimean Bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to the Russian region of Krasnodar due to “an emergency” situation, Russia-installed Governor Sergei Aksyonov wrote on the Telegram messaging app early on Monday.
The emergency situation was damage to the roadway on the bridge, Russian state news agency TASS cited the transport ministry as saying.
The damage is on the roadway that is closer to the Crimea Peninsula, TASS reported.
Aksyonov said the emergency occurred on the 145th pillar of the bridge from the Krasnodar territory. He did not provide any further detail.
Explosions were reported
The RBC-Ukraine news agency reported that explosions were heard on the bridge.
Russia’s Grey Zone channel, a heavily followed Telegram channel affiliated with the Wagner mercenary group, reported that there were two strikes on the bridge at 03:04 a.m. (0004 GMT) and 03:20 a.m.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Crimea was annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, but is internationally recognized as part of Ukraine.
The 12-mile (19-km) road and rail bridge was damaged by an explosion last October, in an attack that the Kremlin said had been orchestrated by Ukrainian security forces. Ukraine admitted only indirectly to the attack months later.
Damage to the bridge
Both Aksyonov and the governor of the Krasnodar region, Veniamin Kondratyev, said that they set up operational headquarters in their regions to address the emergency situation on the bridge.
The Russian-backed administration of the peninsula said Crimea is provided with all necessary stock, but urged residents not to travel via the bridge.
Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Odesa military administration, posted a photo on his Telegram of what seemed a line of the bridge in distance, broken in the middle.
It was not immediately clear whether that was related to the attack.
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