Russia says concert hall attack killed 60 people, injured 145 | Wilnesh News

MOSCOW (AP) — Attackers stormed a large Moscow concert hall on Friday and opened fire on a crowd, killing more than 60 people and wounding more than 100, before President Vladimir Putin Days after consolidating its military status, the venue was set ablaze in a brazen attack. Seize power with a landslide victory in a carefully orchestrated election.

The Islamic State group released a statement on an affiliated social media channel claiming responsibility for the attack. U.S. intelligence agencies learned that the group’s affiliate in Afghanistan was planning an attack in Moscow and shared that information with Russian officials, a U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press.

It’s unclear what happened to the attacker after the attack, which state investigators are investigating as terrorism.

The attack, which set the concert hall on fire and collapsed its roof, was Russia’s deadliest in years and came as Russia’s war with Ukraine entered its third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the attack a “huge tragedy.”

The Kremlin said Putin was informed minutes after the attackers stormed Krokus City Hall. Krokus Town Hall is a large music venue on the western edge of Moscow, with a capacity of 6,200 people.

The attack occurred as crowds gathered to watch a performance by Russian rock band Picnic. The Investigative Commission, the country’s top criminal investigation agency, reported earlier on Saturday that more than 60 people had died. Health authorities released a list of 145 injured, of whom 115 were hospitalized, including five children.

Some Russian news reports said more victims could be trapped in the fires caused by explosives thrown by attackers.

Video showed the building on fire and huge plumes of smoke rising into the night sky. The flashing blue lights of dozens of fire trucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles illuminated the streets, and fire helicopters buzzed overhead, pouring water on the blaze that took hours to bring under control.

The prosecutor’s office said several men dressed in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and opened fire on concertgoers.

Dave Primov, who was in the lobby when the attack occurred, described the panic and chaos as it began.

“There was constant gunfire,” Primov told The Associated Press. “We all stood up and tried to walk toward the aisle. People started to panic, started running, bumping into each other. Some fell, some stepped on them.”

Videos posted by Russian media and messaging app channels showed men armed with assault rifles shooting at screaming people at close range. A video showed a man in the auditorium saying the attackers set fire to the auditorium and gunfire rang out.

According to Russian media reports, the concert hall guards did not have firearms and some may have been killed when the attack began. Some Russian news outlets suggested the attackers fled before special forces and riot police arrived. Police patrols were looking for several vehicles the attackers may have used to escape, reports said.

The Islamic State group said in a statement carried by its Amaq news agency that it attacked a large group of “Christians” in the Moscow suburb of Krasnogorsk, killing and wounding hundreds of people. The veracity of that claim could not immediately be verified.

However, a U.S. official told The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence officials confirmed claims by the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan that the group was responsible for the Moscow attack.

The official said U.S. intelligence agencies had gathered information in recent weeks that an Islamic State affiliate was planning an attack in Moscow. He said U.S. officials privately shared the intelligence with Russian officials earlier this month. The official was briefed on the matter but was not authorized to discuss intelligence information publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Aymen Jawad Tamimi, an expert on the terrorist group, pointed out that the “Islamic State” statement described the attack as targeting Christians, which he said seemed to reflect the group’s “possibility to carry out attacks as a global ‘strike'”. Pagan’s ‘action part’ strategy. There are apostates everywhere. ‘”

In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS shot down a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board, most of whom were Russian holidaymakers returning from Egypt. The group operates primarily in Syria and Iraq but also operates in Afghanistan and Africa and has also been responsible for a number of attacks in Russia’s restive Caucasus region and elsewhere over the past few years. It recruits fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.

Russia’s top security agency said on March 7 that it foiled an attack by the Islamic State group on a synagogue in Moscow that killed several members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. Days earlier, Russian authorities said six suspected Islamic State members had been killed in a shootout in Ingushetia, Russia’s Caucasus region.

Statements poured in from around the world on Friday expressing anger, shock and support for those affected by the concert phone attack.

Some commentators on Russian social media questioned the authorities’ relentless surveillance and pressure on Kremlin critics but failure to identify threats and prevent attacks.

Russian officials said security checks had been stepped up at Moscow’s airports, train stations and the capital’s vast subway system. Moscow’s mayor canceled all mass gatherings and theaters and museums were closed for the weekend. Security measures have also been stepped up in other parts of Russia.

The Kremlin did not immediately blame anyone for the attack, but some Russian lawmakers were quick to blame Ukraine and call for a stepped-up crackdown. The attack came hours after the Russian military launched a sweeping attack on Ukraine’s power system, paralyzing the country’s largest hydroelectric power plant and other energy facilities and leaving more than a million people without power.

Russian Security Council Vice President Medvedev said that if Ukraine’s involvement is confirmed, “all those involved must be traced and killed without mercy, including state officials who committed such atrocities.”

Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, denied Ukraine’s involvement.

“Ukraine has never resorted to terror,” he posted on X. “Everything in this war will be decided on the battlefield.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said he could not reveal details yet, but “these images are horrific. And they’re hard to watch.”

Friday’s attack came after the U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a statement earlier this month urging Americans to avoid crowded places because of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large rallies, including concerts, in the Russian capital. Several other Western embassies repeated the warning.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Friday that the U.S. government has information about Moscow’s planned attacks, prompting the State Department to issue a warning to Americans. Watson said the U.S. government shared the information with Russian authorities under its long-standing “duty to warn” policy.

Putin, who extended his grip on Russia by six years in this week’s presidential election after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, has denounced Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians. “All of this is akin to open blackmail in an attempt to intimidate and destabilize our society,” he said earlier this week.

Russia was rocked by a series of deadly terrorist attacks in the early 2000s during fighting against separatists in the Russian province of Chechnya.

In October 2002, Chechen militants took about 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater. Two days later, Russian special forces attacked the building, killing 129 hostages and 41 Chechen militants, most of them from anesthetic gas used by Russian troops to subdue the attackers.

In September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a school in Beslan, southern Russia, and took hundreds of hostages. The siege ended two days later in a massacre in which more than 330 people were killed, about half of whom were children.