Crimean bridge fire: Bomb explosion and blaze erupts on only bridge linking peninsula to Russia

A truck bomb has caused a fire and the collapse of a section of a bridge linking Crimea with Russia, the country’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee says.

The committee said the truck bomb triggered seven railway cars carrying fuel to catch fire, resulting in a “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge”. The committee didn’t immediately apportion blame.

The 19km bridge across the Kerch Strait linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov is the longest in Europe.

It cost billions of dollars to build and it has provided the essential link to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge.

Earlier Russian state-backed media RIA-Novosti and the Tass news agency quoted local Russian official Oleg Kryuchkov as saying an object thought to be a fuel storage tank caught fire and that traffic has been stopped on the bridge.

He said the span’s “navigable arches” weren’t damaged and that work was ongoing to extinguish the blaze.

Images shared on social media purported to show fire and damage to the bridge. The authenticity of the reports and images couldn’t be immediately verified.

The fire occurred hours after explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early on Saturday, sending towering plumes of smoke into the sky and triggering a series of secondary explosions.