At least 60 people died and more than 100 were injured after attackers opened fire at a large concert hall in Moscow on Friday evening and a fire took hold of the building.
At least four men dressed in camouflage broke into the Crocus City Hall concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow where a band called Picnic was due to perform, state news agency RIA reported, citing one of its journalists, who was a witness.
The shooting represented the largest loss of life in a terrorist attack in Russia in at least a decade and was reminiscent of the Islamist uprisings that marked the first decade of President Vladimir Putin’s rule.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, an anti-crime unit, said more than 60 people died in the attack, adding that the total could rise.
Russia’s national guard said the search for the attackers was “undergoing”. The attackers left the scene in a white Renault, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Putin listened to reports from the heads of four Russian security agencies on the investigation into the attack, as well as officials tasked with helping the victims, the Kremlin said in a late-night statement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had previously told reporters that the president was informed of the attack “within the first minutes” after it began and that he was “constantly receiving information about the events and measures taken from all relevant agencies,” according to the Interfax news agency. . “All essential instructions were given by the president.”
News reports on the social media app Telegram published graphic videos that appeared to show several people killed by unidentified men and cited an unverified death toll many times higher than that of the FSB.
Videos from outside the building showed a huge fire engulfed the roof, sending smoke billowing into the night sky.
Authorities described the attack as an act of terrorism. Some of them speculated that Ukraine, the country against which Russia launched a full-scale invasion two years ago, was responsible, without providing any evidence. Kiev immediately denied any involvement.
A US official said the United States has no reason to doubt the Isis terror group’s claim that it was behind the attack. The FSB recently claimed to have routed an ISIS cell in Kaluga, a city southwest of Moscow.
Sergey Sobyanin, mayor of Moscow, described a “horrible tragedy” at the scene and canceled large-scale public events that were due to take place this weekend in the Russian capital. People were also evacuated from large shopping centers in other Russian cities on Friday evening over fears of similar attacks.
The US embassy in Moscow said it was “shocked” by the news of the attack and expressed “sincere condolences to the Russian people”.
Terrorist attacks rocked Russia in the 1990s and 2000s, mostly linked to two bloody separatist wars in the southern republic of Chechnya, which were the backdrop to Putin’s rise to power.
Friday’s attack will bring back memories for Muscovites of the siege of Nord-Ost, when Chechen fighters took hundreds of people hostage in a Moscow theater in 2002, leaving more than 170 people dead.
After Putin’s security services cracked down on Islamist uprisings in Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan, major attacks have largely faded over the past decade, with the latest taking place in 2017 in a suicide bombing on the San Francisco subway. Petersburg which killed 15 people.
Earlier this month, the US government had information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow – potentially targeting large gatherings – which prompted the State Department to issue a public warning to Americans in Russia. The United States also shared this information with Russian authorities in accordance with its long-standing “duty to warn” policy, according to Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
Missions in six other Western countries issued alerts in early March warning of attacks on public places, including concerts, in the next 48 hours.
Putin rejected what he called “provocative statements” from Western embassies while speaking to the Russian security service FSB on Tuesday.
“All this calls for clear blackmail and the intention to frighten and destabilize our society,” said Putin, fresh from having extended his 24-year rule until at least 2030 after last weekend’s presidential election.
Videos posted on Russian social media after the attack showed men armed with automatic weapons roaming the venue’s lobby, pushing screaming people into a corner and shooting many of them at close range.
Some people were seen prostrate on the floor of the lobby, apparently having been shot.
Another video, taken by a concertgoer, showed seats on fire inside the hall and people trying to escape as automatic fire was heard and smoke filled the room.
“I was in the hall, I heard machine gun fire, the crowd was running out of the service entrance,” a concertgoer told Russian magazine RBC. “There was a crush. Once in the street I heard machine gun fire again.”
According to state media, the FSB and the Russian National Guard raided the building where the attackers had taken refuge. Videos showed emergency helicopters circling over the burning roof.
Crocus City Hall is located just outside the perimeter of the Russian capital and is a large concert hall near the exhibition center of the same name that regularly hosts conferences and other events.
The hall can accommodate 6,200 people. Tickets for the concert of Picnic, an older generation Russian rock band that began performing in 1978, were sold out.