According to Putin, gunmen who stormed a performance theatre in Moscow attempted to flee to Ukraine.
Russia’s Federal Security Service says at least 60 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in an attack at a Moscow concert hall. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
A massive blaze is seen over the Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 22, 2024
MOSCOW
The suburban Moscow music hall where gunmen opened fire on concertgoers was reduced to a blackened, smouldering ruin on Saturday as the number of confirmed deaths in the attack surpassed 130. President Vladimir Putin claimed that the suspects were apprehended while escaping to Ukraine. Kyiv vigorously denied any role in Friday's attack on the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, and the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate claimed responsibility. Putin did not mention IS in his address to the nation, and Kyiv accused him and other Russian politicians of fabricating a link between Ukraine and the attack to fan passion for Russia's recently started third-year-long conflict in Ukraine.
The IS affiliate's assertion was verified by US intelligence officials.
"This incident is entirely the fault of ISIS. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Adrienne Watson, stated in a statement that there was "no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever."
According to Watson, the United States warned Americans living in Russia publicly about a planned terrorist strike in Moscow at the beginning of March and also provided information to Russia about it.
According to Putin, the attack left over 100 people injured and resulted in the arrest of 11 persons in total. He described it as "a bloody, barbaric terrorist act" and claimed that the four suspects were apprehended by Russian authorities while attempting to cross the border into Ukraine through a "window" that had been set up for them.
Videos of the detention and questioning of the suspects were released by Russian media. One of the suspects told the cameras he was solicited via a messaging app by an anonymous aide of an Islamic cleric and paid to participate in the raid.
According to Russian press reports, the shooters were natives of Tajikistan, a mostly Muslim former Soviet republic in Central Asia that borders Afghanistan. A significant number of Tajiks—up to 1.5 million—have Russian citizenship and have worked in Russia.
When contacted for comment on the arrests, Tajikistan's foreign ministry did not immediately reply. The ministry had earlier refuted reports from the Russian media mentioning numerous other Tajiks who were supposedly participating in the raid. Videos of the detention and questioning of the suspects were released by Russian media. One of the suspects told the cameras he was solicited via a messaging app by an anonymous aide of an Islamic cleric and paid to participate in the raid.
According to Russian press reports, the shooters were natives of Tajikistan, a mostly Muslim former Soviet republic in Central Asia that borders Afghanistan. A significant number of Tajiks—up to 1.5 million—have Russian citizenship and have worked in Russia.
When contacted for comment on the arrests, Tajikistan's foreign ministry did not immediately reply. The ministry had earlier refuted reports from the Russian media mentioning numerous other Tajiks who were supposedly participating in the raid.
Putin seemed to dismiss calls from many Russian hardliners for a crackdown on Tajik migrants, stating, "No force will be able to sow the poisonous seeds of discord, panic or disunity in our multi-ethnic society."
He announced that Sunday was a day of mourning and that Russia-wide security measures had been put in place.
With 133 fatalities, the incident was the bloodiest to have occurred in Russia in a long time. According to officials, the number might still go up.
The raid, which came just days after the Russian president solidified his hold on power for a further six years in a vote that followed the most severe suppression of dissent since the Soviet era, was a great humiliation to him.
Despite American warnings, some Russian social media commentators questioned how the authorities, who have ruthlessly banned any opposition activities and muzzled independent media, failed to stop the attack.
The attack happened two weeks after the American Embassy in Moscow sent out a warning to citizens to stay away from public areas due to "imminent" preparations by extremists to target concerts and other mass gatherings in Moscow. The warning was reiterated by several other Western embassies. Putin criticized the warning earlier this week, saying it was an attempt to scare Russians.
On Saturday, investigators searched the burnt remains of the hall for additional casualties. Moscow had a long line of donors waiting to give plasma and blood, according to the Russian health ministry.
Putin's assertion that the assailants attempted to escape to Ukraine was made in response to remarks made by Russian MPs that blamed Ukraine right away for the incident.
Moscow's claims were sharply rejected by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who described it as an attempt by Putin and his lieutenants to place the blame on Ukraine while treating the people there as "expendables."
He posted a statement on his messaging app channel, saying, "They are burning our cities— and they are trying to blame Ukraine." "then rape and torture our people, and then blamed them. They don't care what occurs within their nation; they brought hundreds of thousands of their terrorists here to fight us on Ukrainian land.
Emergency trucks were still collected outside the remains of the music hall, which could accommodate over 6,000 people and held several major events, including the 2013 Miss Universe beauty contest that featured Donald Trump, according to images released by Russian official media.
The Russian rock group Picnic was performing at the location on Friday, and the place was packed.
Online videos showed shooters inside the venue shooting bystanders at close range. Authorities and witnesses were quoted in Russian news reports as saying that the assailants threw explosive devices, which ignited the fire that eventually engulfed the building and collapsed its roof.
The assailants were "shooting directly into the crowd" in the front seats, according to Dave Primov, who escaped the attack and spoke with the AP. As concertgoers scrambled to get out, he recounted the pandemonium in the hall as follows: "People started to panic, started to run, and collided with each other." A few toppled, while others were tramped on.
He claimed to have heard the pops of small explosives and smelled burning when the attackers set the building on fire after he and the others crawled out of the hall and into adjacent utility rooms. Twenty-five minutes later, when they emerged inside the enormous structure, it was destroyed by fire.
"We could have easily become trapped in the fire if it had been a little bit longer," Primov stated.
Global support for the victims and their families, along with statements of indignation and shock, poured in.
The Islamic State organization is a "common terrorist enemy that must be defeated everywhere," according to a statement sent by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who also stated that the United States denounced the act.
IS has long targeted Russia, losing a lot of territory as a result of Russia's military intervention in Syria. Aamaq news agency, the offshoot of IS in Afghanistan, released a statement claiming that the group had targeted a sizable assembly of "Christians" in Krasnogorsk.
In a fresh statement released on Aamaq on Saturday, the organization claimed that four men carrying automatic weapons, a pistol, knives, and firebombs carried out the attack. It said that the attackers killed some concertgoers with knives and fired shots into the crowd, seeing the raid as a continuation of IS's continuing conflict with nations it claims are opposing Islam.
All 224 passengers on board—the majority of them Russian vacationers returning from Egypt—were killed when an IS-planted bomb brought down a Russian passenger aircraft over Sinai in October 2015.
The group has claimed multiple strikes in Russia's dangerous Caucasus and other regions in recent years. It mostly operates in Syria and Iraq, but it also operates in Afghanistan and Africa. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
The offshoot of the group in Afghanistan goes by different names, including ISIS-K or IS-K. The term comes from the Khorasan Province, which throughout the Middle Ages encompassed a large portion of Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia.
Since the Taliban, with which the affiliate is at war, took control of Afghanistan in 2021, many of its fighters have carried out several attacks in the nation.
The August 20, 21 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, which killed roughly 170 Afghans and 13 American soldiers amid the disorderly U.S. exit, was carried out by ISIS-K. They also took credit for the January bombing in Kerman, Iran, which killed ninety-five people during a funeral procession.
Russia's top security agency announced on March 7 that it had stopped an IS cell's attempt to assault a synagogue in Moscow and killed many of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital, just hours before the US Embassy issued a warning about impending strikes. A few days prior, Ingushetia, in Russia's Caucasus region, was the scene of a gunfight that claimed the lives of six suspected IS militants, according to Russian police.
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https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/russian-detains-11-after-deadly-concert-hall-attack-108419908
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