Russia detains 11 people following attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 130 people

A suburban music hall on the outskirts of Moscow where gunmen opened fire on spectators was reduced to a blackened, smoking smash on Saturday because the death toll from the attack surpassed 130 and Russian authorities arrested 4 suspects. President Vladimir Putin claimed they were captured while fleeing to Ukraine.(*130*)

Kiev has firmly denied any involvement in Friday’s attack on the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Krasnogorsk, and the Afghan branch of Islamic State has claimed responsibility.(*130*)

Putin didn’t mention IS in his address to the nation, and Kiev accused him and other Russian politicians of falsely linking Ukraine to the attack as a way to stoke fervor for Russia’s war in Ukraine, which recently entered its third 12 months.(*130*)

U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the claim by an IS-affiliated entity.(*130*)

“ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. “Ukrainians were not involved at all,” National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

In early March, the United States provided Russia with information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow and issued a public warning to Americans in Russia, Watson said.

Putin said a total of 11 people were detained in the attack, which left more than 100 injured. He called it a “bloody, barbaric terrorist act.” He said Russian authorities captured the four suspects as they tried to flee to Ukraine through a “window” prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border.

Russian media aired videos that appeared to show the suspects being detained and interrogated, including one who told cameras he was contacted via a messaging app by an unidentified assistant to an Islamic preacher and paid to take part in the raid.

Russian news reports identified the gunmen as citizens of Tajikistan, a Muslim-majority former Soviet republic in Central Asia that borders Afghanistan. As many as 1.5 million Tajiks worked in Russia, and many of them have Russian citizenship.

Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry, which denied initial Russian media reports that several other Tajiks were allegedly involved in the raid, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arrests.

Many Russian hardliners have called for a crackdown on immigrants from Tajikistan. Still, Putin appeared to reject the idea, saying: “No force will be able to sow the poisonous seeds of discord, panic and disunity in our multi-ethnic society.”

He declared Sunday a day of mourning and said additional security measures had been introduced across Russia.

The death toll was 133, making the attack Russia’s deadliest in years. Authorities say the death toll may rise further.

The raid was a major embarrassment for the Russian leader and came just days after he consolidated his power in the country for another six years in a vote that followed the harshest crackdown on dissent since Soviet times.

Some commentators on Russian social media questioned the fact that the authorities, who ruthlessly suppressed all opposition activities and muzzled independent media, failed to prevent the attack despite U.S. warnings.

The attack came two weeks after the U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued an advisory urging Americans to avoid crowded places because of “imminent” extremist plans targeting large gatherings in Moscow, including concerts. Several other Western embassies echoed this warning. Earlier this week, Putin condemned the warning as an attempt to intimidate Russians.

On Saturday, investigators were combing through the charred wreck of the hall in search of more victims. Russia’s health ministry said hundreds of people lined up in Moscow to donate blood and plasma.

Putin’s claim that the attackers were trying to escape to Ukraine followed comments from Russian lawmakers pointing fingers at Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky angrily dismissed Moscow’s accusations as an attempt by Putin and his lieutenants to shift the blame to Ukraine while treating his own nation as “expendable.”

“They are burning our cities and trying to blame Ukraine,” he said in a statement on his messaging app channel. “They torture and rape our nation – and they blame them. They brought hundreds of thousands of their terrorists here to fight us on our Ukrainian soil, and they don’t care what happens in their own country.”

Photos shared by Russian state media showed emergency vehicles still gathered outside the ruins of the concert hall, which could accommodate more than 6,000 people and hosted a number of large events, including the Miss Universe 2013 beauty pageant with Donald Trump.

On Friday, crowds gathered at the venue for a concert by the Russian rock band Piknik.

Videos posted online show armed bandits shooting civilians at close range. Russian news reports quote authorities and witnesses who say the attackers threw explosives that started a fire that eventually consumed the building and caused the roof to collapse.

Dave Primow, who survived the attack, told the AP that the attackers “fired directly into the crowd” in the front rows. He described the chaos in the hall as spectators fled in a hurry: “People started to panic, started running and crashed into each other. Some fell, others trampled them.”(*130*)

After he and others crawled out of the hallway into nearby utility rooms, he said he heard small explosives being fired and smelled burning because the attackers set fire to the constructing. When they left the massive constructing 25 minutes later, it was engulfed in flames.(*130*)

“If it had gone on a little longer, we might have just been stuck in the fire,” Primow said.(*130*)

Messages of concern, shock and support for the victims and their families got here from everywhere in the world.(*130*)

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the United States condemned the attack and noted that Islamic State is “a common terrorist enemy that have to be defeated in every single place.”

IS, which lost much of its ground following Russia’s military action in Syria, has long been attacking Russia. In a statement published by the group’s Aamaq news agency, the Afghan branch of IS said it attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk.(*130*)

On Saturday, the group issued a latest statement to Aamaq, saying the attack was carried out by 4 men who used automatic rifles, a handgun, knives and firebombs. It said the attackers fired into the group and used knives to kill some concertgoers, calling the raid a part of IS’ ongoing war against countries it says are fighting Islam.(*130*)

In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS shot down a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacationers getting back from Egypt.(*130*)

The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but in addition in Afghanistan and Africa, has claimed responsibility for several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in recent times. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the previous Soviet Union.(*130*)

The group’s branch in Afghanistan is thought variously as ISIS-K or IS-K, taking its name from Khorasan Province. In the Middle Ages, this region covered much of Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia.(*130*)

The affiliate has hundreds of fighters who’ve repeatedly carried out attacks in Afghanistan because the country was overrun in 2021 by the Taliban, with whom they continue to be in bitter conflict.(*130*)

ISIS-K was behind the August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. soldiers and roughly 170 Afghans throughout the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. They also claimed responsibility for the January bomb attack in Kerman, Iran, that killed 95 people during a funeral procession.(*130*)

On March 7, just hours before the U.S. embassy warned of the upcoming attacks, Russia’s top security agency said it had thwarted an IS cell attack on a synagogue in Moscow and killed several of its members within the Kaluga Oblast near the Russian capital. A couple of days earlier, Russian authorities announced that six suspected members of the Islamic State were killed in a shooting in Ingushetia within the Russian Caucasus.(*130*)