Huge explosion destroys part of bridge linking Russia and Crimea

A huge explosion rocked a strategically important bridge linking Russia and the Crimean Peninsula early Saturday, bringing down sections of road and causing fuel tanker wagons to catch fire on a train.

A day after President Vladimir Putin celebrated his 70th birthday, the Kerch Strait Bridge, which has been a symbol of his illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, was partially destroyed by the blast, which was triggered by a truck being “blown up,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

This “resulted in the ignition of seven fuel tanks of a train heading towards the Crimean Peninsula,” the statement said, adding that two sections of road bridge had partially collapsed, but that the arch spanning the Kerch Strait, the waterway through which ships travel between the Black and Azov seas, had not been damaged.