At least forty people were killed and more than a hundred injured yesterday in an attack followed by a fire at a concert hall in a Moscow suburb, claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State.
“The provisional toll of the terrorist attack perpetrated at the Crocus City Hall complex is currently forty dead and more than one hundred injured,” indicated the security forces (FSB).
The attack began in the middle of a show by the group Piknik, in Krasnogorsk, on the outskirts of Moscow, when the attackers broke into the theater and opened fire on a crowd. Videos of the attack circulated widely on social media.
At least one man was detained and special units of the Russian National Guard were operating at the site of the attack searching for the perpetrators.
The Islamic State group, which has already attacked Russia on several occasions, claimed responsibility for the assault and reported on Telegram that its fighters “attacked a large concentration on the outskirts of the Russian capital.”
Ukraine, for its part, quickly denied any responsibility for the attack. Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said: “Let’s be clear, Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with these events. “Ukraine never used terrorist methods of war.”
Fire. The killers, dressed in camouflage clothing and armed with automatic rifles, threw an incendiary bomb that caused an explosion and a fire that spread through the building.
The rescue services reported a “group of two to five unidentified people, with combat uniforms and automatic weapons”, who “opened fire on the security agents at the entrance to the concert hall”, before “starting to shoot at the public.”
The current channels Baza and Mash, close to the security forces, published videos in which at least two armed men are seen advancing through the lobby. In different sequences, corpses and people are seen rushing towards the exit.
According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, firefighters managed to evacuate about a hundred people who were in the basement.
More than a third of the concert hall caught fire and part of the roof collapsed.
“My deepest condolences to the families of the victims. Two firefighting helicopters are at the scene. The main task now is to put out the fire that spread over a large area,” stated the governor of the Moscow region, Andrey Vorobyov.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reported that “the president (Vladimir Putin) is constantly informed by all relevant services about what is happening and the measures being taken.”
Russian forces blocked all exits from the city of Moscow, canceled mass events in the region and advised citizens not to go to places that could attract crowds for the next 48 hours.
The United States conveyed its condolences to the victims of the “terrible” shooting. “The images are simply horrifying and hard to see,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
The European Union said it was “shocked and dismayed” by the massacre and indicated that it “condemns all attacks against civilians,” said its spokesman, Peter Stano. France, Italy and Spain also condemned the aggression.
For its part, the Argentine Foreign Ministry expressed “repudiation and condemnation” of the attack.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called the attack a “bloody terrorist attack” on her Telegram account: “The Russian Foreign Ministry is receiving calls from ordinary citizens around the world, offering their condolences after the horrible tragedy. . They also express their strong condemnation of this bloody terrorist attack. “Right now all efforts are dedicated to saving the people who are still at the scene of the attack. “The entire world community is obliged to condemn this heinous crime!” she added yesterday a few minutes after the crime.
US Warnings Earlier this month, on March 7, the United States warned of possible terrorist attacks in Russia. “Monitoring reports indicate that extremists have imminent plans to attack large gatherings in Moscow, including concerts, and American citizens should be warned to avoid large gatherings during the next 48 hours,” the Embassy in Moscow had warned, later accompanied by the United Kingdom, two weeks before the attack.
US authorities recommended their citizens avoid traveling to Russia for the next few days. And, although the warning was for 48 hours following the announcement, Washington had made special emphasis that the focus of the attacks would be the concerts in Moscow, as finally happened.
Putin, two days after his reelection, and three days before the tragedy, contemptuously ignored the warnings and called them “blackmail.”
“Let me remind you of the recent, frankly provocative statements by various Western official structures regarding the possibility of terrorist attacks in Russia. “All of this seems like outright blackmail and an attempt to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
Previous incident in 2002
S.L.CH
This is not the first time that terrorists have broken into a Moscow theater. On October 23, 2002, when Vladimir Putin had been in power for just three years, and the second Chechen war was underway, forty kidnappers entered the Dubrovka theater, a packed house, and took more than 800 people hostage, including actors, technicians and audience watching the musical Nord-ost.
The attackers were Chechen separatists demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region. They were armed with pistols and rifles, carried grenades on their belts, and scattered explosives throughout the theater. The kidnappers said they were ready to kill ten hostages, for every Chechen killed.
One of the leaders of the theater takeover said in an interview: “We have nothing to lose. There is no way back. We have come to die. Our motto is freedom and paradise. We already have freedom because we have come to Moscow. “Now we want to be in paradise.”
After four days of demonstrations, medical interventions and useless negotiations involving journalists and public figures, Russian forces injected narcotic gases into the theater with the aim of rendering the kidnappers unable to react. As a result, 130 hostages died of suffocation.
The forty attackers, all killed, were, for the most part, in their early 20s. The women who were part of the kidnapping were believed to be widows of Chechens who died at the hands of the Russians.