A stunning series of photos and videos shows the violent impact of the explosion that tore through Russia’s prized Kerch Strait bridge to Crimea early Saturday morning.
A monstrous fireball bloomed over all four of the bridge’s vehicle lanes at 6:07 a.m. as a passenger car and a freight truck drove side by side up the incline to its towering arch.
The flames appeared to reach across the water, enveloping the twin railroad bridge about 100 feet away.
A moment later, flaming shrapnel and sparks could be seen raining down onto the roadway and into the water below.
The mysteriously powerful blast killed three people on the 12-mile bridge and caused a partial roadway collapse.
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| Photo: AFP/Getty Images |
A major explosion on Saturday severely damaged the bridge connecting Russia’s mainland to the occupied Crimean Peninsula, disrupting traffic on a crucial artery for the supply of fuel, military equipment and food to Russian troops fighting to hold ground in southern Ukraine.
The bridge, opened by President Vladimir Putin to great fanfare in 2018, was meant to symbolize the might of the Russian state and the permanence of the Kremlin’s annexation of the peninsula four years earlier. Russia even released a feature movie about its construction.
Russia’s investigations committee said three people died after the early-morning explosion of a truck on the bridge’s roadway next to a supply train that was carrying fuel.
Mr. Putin signed a decree requiring the boosting of defenses for Crimean transportation and energy infrastructure links. The decree placed the country’s intelligence service, FSB, in charge of the measures.
Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed leader of Crimea, raised the terrorism alert level to high through Oct. 23.
Some demolition experts who analyzed footage of the blast questioned the Russian version and said that the explosion must have come from under the bridge, caused either by an explosives-laden boat, manned or unmanned, or by shaped charges placed by divers.
Tony Spamer, a former British Army expert on bridge demolitions, said a truck bomb would have created a hole in the middle of bridge but wouldn’t have been sufficient to cut the reinforcing bar and cause the structure to collapse. “You’ve got to attack the whole width of the bridge. Looking at it, it looks like it was attacked from underneath. It’s a monster job,” he said. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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