The massacre at a Moscow concert hall on Friday left at least 143 people dead, according to Margarita Simonyan, an editor at a Russian state TV channel. The victims were waiting for a show to start. Eleven people, four of whom opened fire on the public, were arrested. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
Simonyan published a video of one of the suspects, a young bearded man, under interrogation on the side of a highway. The man spoke Russian with a strong foreign accent. Shakily, he claimed that he arrived by plane from Turkey on March 4 and that he had received orders to carry out the attack via the Telegram app, for money. The images initially showed him lying face down, with his hands tied behind his back and his chin on the combat boots of a man in a camouflage uniform. When questioned, he was brought to his knees. Another man with cuts and bruises on his face was being questioned, with the help of an interpreter, while sitting on a bench with his hands and feet bound.
Not all victims were shot, a house fire also killed people. The perpetrators of the attack allegedly set fire to the place with gasoline they brought in backpacks.
When the gunshots started, there was panic, a video shows. The Baza news website, which has sources in the security services, counted 28 bodies in a bathroom and 14 on the stairs. “They found mothers hugging their children,” the website stated.
The Federal Security Service (FSB, its acronym in Russian) declared that the four shooters were arrested while trying to escape, in a Renault vehicle, across the border with Ukraine, where they had contacts. “This, of course, is another lie by the Russian special services,” Ukrainian intelligence spokesman Andrei Kartapolov told Reuters.
Two of the shooters were reportedly caught after a car chase in the Bryansk region, 340 km southeast of Moscow, and the other two while trying to flee into a forest. Parliamentarian Alexander Khinshtein said they had a pistol, a rifle ammunition magazine and passports from Tajikistan in the car — consistent with the Islamic State's claim as the country, a former member of the Soviet Union, has a Muslim majority. . The terrorist organization claimed responsibility through its communications agency, Amaq, on Telegram.
American intelligence confirmed the group's claim. An anonymous agent told Reuters that Washington had warned Moscow in the last two weeks about the possibility of an attack. In fact, there was a warning from the American embassy in Russia, but it was preceded by a few hours by an attack by the FSB against a synagogue in Moscow. In this case, the terrorists would have Afghan origins, but would also be affiliated with the Islamic State. The group's enmity dates back mainly to when the Kremlin launched attacks against it in the context of the Syrian civil war in 2015.
The concert hall has a name in English, Crocus City Hall, and capacity for more than six thousand people. It is located in the city of Krasnogorsk, part of the Moscow metropolis, and has hosted big names in music such as Eric Clapton and the band A-ha. Russia has beefed up security for all modes of transportation in its capital, whose metropolitan area includes 21 million people.
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