Security authorities in Russia have arrested four gunmen who killed at least 115 people at a concert venue near Moscow in one of the bloodiest terror assaults in history.
The director of Russia’s federal security service (FSB) informed Vladimir Putin that 11 people had been detained in connection with the Friday terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall outside Moscow, including four suspected shooters.
Islamic State claimed credit late Friday through a connected news outlet. Telegram said gunmen left after the event. Washington obtained intelligence confirming the Islamic State’s claim.
Russian officials called the attack terrorism.
Even if the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Ukraine attack, Moscow may apportion guilt.
The FSB blamed Kiev on Saturday, claiming they caught the gunmen trying to enter Ukraine without proper documentation.
The FSB says, “They had contacts on the Ukrainian side.”
Some Russian authorities believed the two-year invasion of Ukraine caused it.
The first deputy chair of the state duma’s international affairs committee, Alexey Chepa, said “events were connected to Ukraine.”
Kiev strongly denies the link.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accuses Kyiv of “aiming at inciting anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russian society and creating conditions to boost the mobilization of Russian citizens into criminal aggression against our state.”
On Saturday afternoon, Russia’s investigating commission reported 115 disaster deaths.
Sixteen of the 145 wounded were “critical.”
“The terrorist attack will affect many people,” regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said.
Nighttime photos revealed Crocus City Hall on fire, and the mysterious attackers appeared to have killed numerous people. Three troops in fatigue fire at persons lying in the performance theater lobby in one footage. More footage showed people shouting, running down stairs, and crawling out of the music venue on their hands and knees.
The event occurred as a seasoned Russian rock band prepared to play to a sold-out audience.
Witness accounts suggest confusion and disturbance, with many concertgoers believing the gunshots were part of the act.
“We waited for the music to begin in the rear rows.”I thought pyrotechnics were part of the music when I heard loud pops, “Meduza reported.
According to the Russian investigating committee, the music hall victims died from gunshot wounds and fire-related “poisoning.”
The panel said the criminals burned the performance hall’s equipment with “a flammable liquid.”
The Russian security service’s Baza telegraph channel reported the discovery of over ten victims’ bodies in a Crocus City Hall bathroom.
The station said the victim died from smoke inhalation while fleeing the gunfire.
Putin has not spoken or appeared since the incident. According to the Kremlin, the Russian president wished the terrorist attack victims a “speedy recovery.”.
The UN Security Council called the bombing a “heinous and cowardly terrorist attack,” which world leaders condemned.
Foreign Secretary David Cameron says Britain “condemns the deadly attack in the strongest possible terms.”
The Crocus City Hall shooting was Russia’s deadliest, exceeding the 2004 Beslan school siege that killed 334 people, including 186 children, after militants held them for two days.
Investigators will probe Putin for disregarding a terror alert weeks before the attack.
Two weeks before, Western nations led by the US cautioned their citizens not to attend Russian protests and issued terror threats.
Isis-K, the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, claimed the brutal attack.
In March, US officials discovered Isis-K was planning a Moscow strike.
Putin called western embassies’ March threats “provocation.”
A Saturday Tass report said a US security source informed Russian authorities of a possible terrorist attack.
FSB claimed to have averted an Isis-K synagogue attack in Moscow, which seeks a caliphate in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran.
Putin’s 2015 support for Bashar al-Assad against rebels and ISIS changed the Syrian civil war.
Many Russian operations in Ingushetia targeted armed Islamist terrorists, resulting in rebel-law enforcement gunfights.
Media and messaging expert Pawel Wójcik said Islamic State rhetoric after the Moscow attack resembled Tehran and Kabul attacks.
According to Wójcik, “The messaging we saw from IS after the attack was standard.”
Wójcik said Moscow’s involvement in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Syria will provide the Islamic State with “many motives” to attack Russia.
The ISKP “strongly embraced an anti-Russia narrative in its propaganda output,” he said.
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