A 17-year-old resident from western Ukraine has been detained on suspicion of firing sniper shots in Simferopol, said Rustam Temirgaliyev, Crimea's first deputy prime minister.

Temirgaliyev told a local radio on Thursday that two people had died in the shooting incident, which Crimean police had described as a possible provocation.

Sniper shots were fired from one location at two directions, one at a Ukrainian military facility and the other at Crimean self-defense patrols nearby.

Vesti FM radio quoted Crimean police sources as saying that the suspected sniper comes from Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, and is a member of the nationalist Right Sector.

Local law enforcement agencies have been trying to find out whether the teenager was acting alone.

"Someone fired from the window of a partially-constructed building in the immediate vicinity of a military installation at self-defense unit soldiers checking up on a report that armed people had entered that building," said the Crimean Interior Ministry in a press release.

"The other shots were fired at the nearby Ukrainian military installation," it added.