Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev Sunday of committing a "terrorist act" by masterminding and carrying out the explosion Saturday that partially destroyed the Crimean bridge linking Russia and the peninsula, which was followed overnight by bloody Russian strikes on a Ukrainian city.

"The perpetrators and planners are the Ukrainian intelligence services," Putin said during a meeting with the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, according to a video clip broadcast by the Kremlin.

"There is no doubt that this is a terrorist act aimed at destroying Russia's civilian infrastructure of great importance," he added.

This is Putin's first reaction to the explosion, which occurred at dawn on Saturday, at a time when his forces are facing field difficulties in Ukraine.

The Kremlin announced that the Russian president will hold a meeting of the Security Council on Monday.

The Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian special services declined to deny or confirm their responsibility, and President Volodymyr Zelensky contented himself with mocking the issue in a video in which he mocked Saturday the "cloudy" and "hot" weather in Crimea, referring to the fire that broke out on the bridge following the explosion.

During the night, Russian bombing targeted residential buildings in Zaporizhia, killing 12 to 17 people, according to different numbers, three days after a previous bombing that killed 17 people in the city.

The latest toll issued by the local administration indicated that 13 people were killed and 60 injured, including women and children, after a previous toll issued by the municipal council stated that there were 17 dead.

"Absolutely meaningless. Absolute evil. Terrorists and savages. Who issued this order to the one who carried it out. All bear responsibility. Before the law and before the people," the Ukrainian president wrote in his account on Telegram.

He added that this Russian strike "destroyed private residences where people lived, slept without attacking anyone."

The Ukrainian Air Force reported that four cruise missiles and two missiles fired from fighter jets and other anti-aircraft missiles were fired at Zaporizhia.

For its part, the Russian army announced that it had launched strikes with "high-precision weapons" on units of "foreign mercenaries" near Zaporizhia.

The city is located in the vicinity of the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, which has been the center of a conflict that has been going on for months, causing it to stop working. The International Atomic Energy Agency warned on Saturday that the plant had lost its last external source of electricity due to the bombings and had now relied on emergency generators only.

In the aftermath of the massive explosion on the Crimean Bridge, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khosnullin announced that divers would inspect the bridge on Sunday to assess the structural damage in it, and to issue "the first results" during the day.

The movement of cars and trains resumed on Saturday, a few hours after the explosion, which caused the collapse of several parts of one of the tracks of the bridge, which was built at great cost and inaugurated by Putin in 2018, and led to the outbreak of fire in several tank trailers loaded with fuel on part of the railway from the bridge.

In the first stage, ferries handled the transportation of trucks.

On Sunday, the Ministry of Transportation announced that passenger trains from Crimea to Russia were "running according to normal schedule".

The Russian authorities attributed the explosion, which killed three people on Saturday morning, to a truck bomb owned by a resident of the Russian Krasnodar region.

Kiev has repeatedly threatened to hit this bridge, which is used to transport supplies to Russian forces in Ukraine.

Surveillance camera footage circulated on the Internet showed a powerful explosion coinciding with the passage of several vehicles on the bridge, including a truck, which the Russian authorities suspect was the source of the explosion.

Other footage showed a convoy of burning tanker vehicles in the railway part of the bridge, and the collapse of two sections of one of the two lanes of the road.

According to investigators, the attack, which occurred early Saturday morning, killed three people, the truck driver, a man and a woman who were in a nearby car at the time of the explosion, and their bodies were recovered from the water.

And at a time when it is facing difficulties on the Kherson front in southern Ukraine, the Russian army confirmed on Saturday that the supplies of its forces are not threatened.

Since the beginning of September, Russian forces have been forced to retreat at many points on the front. It was especially forced to withdraw from the Kharkiv region (northeast) and retreat in the Kherson region.

In the face of these setbacks in the face of the onrush of the Ukrainian army, reinforced with Western weapons supplies, at the end of September Putin issued a decree calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists and announced the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, although his forces only partially control them.

On Sunday, the Russian security services (FSB) monitored a "significant increase" in the Ukrainian bombing that targeted the Russian lands bordering Ukraine, killing one person and injuring five others during the past week.