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A Russian serviceman from Rosguardia (National Guard) secures a domain while a large chimney is seen over the Crocus City Hall, on the western edge of Moscow, Russia. Several assailants stormed a main concert hall in Moscow on Friday and fired into the crowd. killing at least 40 people, injuring more than a hundred, and setting fire to the hallway in a brazen attack.
SERGEI VEDYASHKIN/MOSCOW NEWS AGENCY VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
A large chimney is seen above the Crocus Town Hall, west of Moscow, Russia. Several assailants stormed a main concert hall in Moscow on Friday and opened fire on the crowd, killing at least 40 people, wounding more than 100 and setting fire to the corridor in a brazen attack.
SERGEI VEDYASHKIN/MOSCOW NEWS AGENCY VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
A large chimney is seen above the Crocus Town Hall, west of Moscow, Russia. Several assailants stormed a main concert hall in Moscow on Friday and opened fire on the crowd, killing at least 40 people, wounding more than 100 and setting fire to the corridor in a brazen attack.
MOSCOW>> Assailants stormed a main concert hall in Moscow and opened fire on the crowd, killing more than 60 people, wounding more than 100 and setting the venue on fire in a brazen attack just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power. in a highly orchestrated electoral turnaround.
The Islamic State organization claimed responsibility for the attack in a post on its affiliated social media channels. A U. S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U. S. intelligence agencies learned that the organization’s Afghanistan branch was planning an attack on Moscow and shared the data with Russia. Officials.
It was not without delay that it became known what happened to the attackers after the attack, which state investigators were investigating for terrorism.
The attack, which left the concert hall in flames with the roof collapsed, was the deadliest in Russia in years and came as the war in Ukraine dragged into its third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the attack a “great tragedy. “
The Kremlin said Putin reported minutes after the attackers stormed Crocus City Hall, a giant concert hall in western Moscow with a capacity of 6,200 people.
The attack came as the crowd gathered to see a performance by Russian rock band Picnic. The Investigative Committee, the state’s most sensible criminal investigation agency, reported Saturday morning that more than 60 people had been killed. The health government has published a list of 145 injured, totaling 115 hospitalized, adding five children.
Some Russian media warned that other patients may have been trapped in the fire that broke out after the attackers threw explosives.
The video shows the construction of the chimney, with a huge cloud of smoke emerging into the night sky. The street is illuminated by the flashing blue lights of dozens of smokestack trucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles, while smokestack helicopters circled overhead to sell water to put out the fire that took hours to control.
The prosecutor said several men in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and fired at spectators.
Dave Primov, who was in the lobby at the time of the attack, described the panic and chaos at the start of the attack.
“There were bursts of gunfire,” Primov told the AP. “We all gave up and tried to get to the hallways. People began to panic, run and bump into others. Some fell and others trampled on them.
Videos posted in Russian media and on messaging app channels showed men armed with attack rifles shooting at other people who were screaming at point-blank range. A video showed a guy in the room claiming that the attackers had set him on fire, as gunfire rang out incessantly.
The guards at the concert hall were unarmed and some may have been killed at the start of the attack, Russian media reported. Some Russian media reported that the attackers had fled before the arrival of special forces and police. Police patrols were reportedly searching for several cars in which the attackers may also have fled.
In a statement released through its Aamaq news agency, the Islamic State organization said it had attacked a giant gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk, a suburb of Moscow, killing and wounding hundreds of people. It was not easy to imagine verifying the authenticity of this statement.
However, U. S. intelligence officials showed the claim through the Islamic State’s Afghanistan-based branch that it was to blame for Moscow’s attack, a U. S. official told the AP.
The official said U. S. intelligence agencies had amassed data in recent weeks that the IS branch was preparing an attack on Moscow. He said U. S. officials shared the intelligence privately earlier this month with Russian officials. The official reported on the matter, but it is not legal to speak publicly. He spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Noting that ISIS framed its accusations as an attack on Christians, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on the terror group, said it appeared to reflect the group’s strategy of “attacking wherever they can as part of a global fight against infidels. ” and apostates everywhere. “
In October 2015, an ISIS bomb shot down a Russian airliner over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian tourists returning from Egypt. The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, has also claimed responsibility for several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in recent years. He recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
On March 7, Russia’s most sensible security firm said it had foiled an attack on a synagogue in Moscow through an Islamic State cell, killing several of its operatives in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. Days earlier, the Russian government said six suspected IS members had been killed in a shooting attack in Ingushetia, in the volatile Caucasus region.
Today, statements of indignation, surprise and solidarity with those affected by the attack on the concert hall are pouring in from all over the world.
Some commentators on Russian social media have questioned how the authorities, who relentlessly monitor and pressure Kremlin critics, failed to identify the risk and prevent the attack.
Russian said security had been tightened at airports, exercise stations and the capital’s extensive metro network. The mayor of Moscow canceled all mass gatherings and closed theaters and museums over the weekend. Other Russian regions have also beefed up their security.
The Kremlin did not blame anyone for the attack, but some Russian lawmakers were quick to blame Ukraine and called for the attacks to be intensified. Hours before the attack, the Russian military introduced a major bombardment against Ukraine’s system of forces, crippling the country’s largest hydroelectric plant and other forces. comforts and leaving more than a million people without strength.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that if Ukraine’s involvement is proven, all those involved “should be hunted down and killed mercilessly, adding to the state officials who committed such an atrocity. “
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied any involvement by Ukraine.
“Ukraine has never resorted to terrorist methods,” he said on X. “Everything in this war will only take place on the battlefield. “
John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said he may not be talking about the details yet, but that “the photographs are just horrific. “And it’s hard to watch.
Today’s attack follows an earlier one this month in which the U. S. Embassy in Moscow urged Americans to avoid crowded places due to the extremists’ “imminent” plans to attack giant gatherings in the Russian capital, in addition to concerts. The warning was repeated at several other Western embassies.
National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said the U. S. government has information about a planned attack on Moscow, prompting the State Department to include a warning to Americans. The U. S. government shared this data with the Russian government in accordance with its longstanding “policy duty to warn,” Watson said.
Putin, who extended his six-year grip on Russia in this week’s presidential election following a sweeping crackdown on dissent, denounced Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians. “This all looks like open blackmail and an attempt to scare and destabilize our society,” he said this week.
Russia was rocked by a series of deadly terrorist attacks in the early 2000s while fighting separatists in Russia’s Chechnya province.
In October 2002, Chechen militants took another 800 people hostage in a Moscow theater of operations. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the building and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters were killed, most from the narcotic fuel used by Russian forces to subdue the attackers.
In September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a town in Beslan, southern Russia, and took numerous hostages. The siege ended in a massacre two days later and more than 330 people, including children, were killed.
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