Blasts in Crimea, pro-Russia officials report Ukraine drone attack

Residents of Russian-occupied Crimea reported an explosion near the bridge linking the peninsula to the Russian mainland early on Saturday, but a Russia-installed official in the region denied the bridge had come under attack. Other pro-Russian officials in occupied areas of Ukraine said the explosions were linked to an attack by Ukrainian drones.

Residents of Russian-occupied Crimea reported an explosion near the bridge linking the peninsula to the Russian mainland early on Saturday, but a Russia-installed official in the region denied the bridge had come under attack.

Other pro-Russian officials in occupied areas of Ukraine said the explosions were linked to an attack by Ukrainian drones. Some reports said a tanker sailing under a Russian flag sustained damage. Ukraine made no statement on those reports.

Traffic was halted on the bridge in the early morning, the third such stop in the past 24 hours. "Once again, there was no direct attack on the Crimea bridge and there was no explosion in the immediate vicinity," Oleg Kryuchkov, an adviser to the Russia-installed governor of Crimea was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Ukraine's UNIAN news agency said three explosions had been reported in the area. Both Ukrainian news reports and pro-Russian officials in occupied parts of Ukraine said Ukrainian drones had attacked a tanker vessel in the Kerch Strait operating under a Russian flag and identified as the SIG.

Some reports said the tanker was carrying motor oil to Syria. One Russian-appointed official in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, Vladimir Rogov, posted an audio clip in which the vessel had requested a tow from tugboats. He said there were no injuries in the incident, which occurred 32 nautical miles from the Kerch Strait.

The bridge, completed by Russia in 2018, four years after Moscow annexed the peninsula from Ukraine, has been subjected to two major attacks in the 17-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the most recent one occurring last month. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for the attacks only indirectly.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)