Russian authorities have currently identified 29 people among the 133 killed in Friday night's attack on a concert venue near Moscow by gunmen, the Emergencies Ministry said today.
The ministry released a a list with only 29 names, showing the difficulty of identifying the victims, while rescuers continue to collect the wreckage of Crocus City Hall, which was destroyed by the fire caused by the perpetrators of the attack.
Gunmen stormed Crocus City Hall near Moscow yesterday, killing at least 143 people and wounding dozens more in the deadliest attack in Russia since the Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004.
The attack
The four men, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, arrived at Crocus City Hall at around 19.40 local and Greek time in a minivan.
The men calmly walked towards the metal detectors at Crocus City Hall, firing from contact with automatic weapons the terrified civilians who fell screaming to the ground in a hail of bullets.
Russian media began reporting around 20:15 local time about the attack at the concert hall in Krasnogorsk, on the northwestern outskirts of the Russian capital.
Rescue services, as reported by the Interfax news agency, said that the attackers “opened fire on security members at the entrance to the concert hall”, before “starting to shoot at the crowd”.
According to a reporter for the state-run Ria Novosti news agency, people in camouflage uniforms stormed the hall before opening fire and throwing “a grenade or an incendiary bomb, which caused a fire.”
“The people in the room fell to the floor to protect himself from the fire, for about 15-20 minutes, after they started running out in panic,” said the same source.
Russian investigators described how the men set fire to the building. Some eyewitnesses said they poured some kind of flammable liquid on the seats and curtains before setting them on fire.
An AFP reporter who arrived at the scene a few hours after the attack saw black smoke and flames rising above from the roof of the concert hall, which can accommodate up to 6000 people. According to media, a part of the roof collapsed. The fire was then brought under control.
The report
Russia's Investigative Committee announced that the death toll was 133, but Margarita Simonyan, a journalist for Russian state television and head of Russia Today, spoke of 143 dead.
According to some sources 145 people have injured. The Moscow Region announced that 121 people had been injured. Earlier, he had reported that 60 of the injured were in critical condition.
According to the Ministry of Emergency Management, firefighters managed to evacuate around 100 people who are in the basement of the concert hall. Operations carried out by the authorities also allowed “people who had taken refuge on the roof of the building to be rescued with the help of lifting equipment”.
Claim
The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a post by Amaq's propaganda outlet on Telegram, about four hours after the shooting began.
“The attack was carried out in the context of the war raging between the Islamic State and countries fighting Islam,” Amaq added in a statement.
The US has intelligence information that corroborated its claim. Islamic State to claim responsibility for the deadly attack, two US officials said yesterday.
Officials said the U.S. warned Russia in recent weeks of the possibility of an attack, a move they say prompted the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to issue a warning to Americans.
Two weeks ago the U.S. Embassy in Russia warned that “extremists” had imminent plans for an attack in Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a televised address to the Russian people that the four men who carried out the attack near Moscow were heading to Ukraine when they were arrested and were hoping to cross the border.
“They tried to hide and moved to Ukraine, where, according to preliminary information, a 'window' had been prepared for those from the Ukrainian side to cross the border,” Putin stressed.
The spokesman for Andriy Yusov of Ukraine's military security services told Reuters: “Ukraine is of course not involved in this terrorist attack.”
The perpetrators
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had arrested 11 people, including four men who carried out the attack. Russian media reported that the men fled the scene of the attack in a white vehicle and that they were arrested in the Bryansk region, 340 kilometers from Moscow.
Some of those arrested are seen being questioned on the side of the road in video released by Russian media and networks on Telegram with close ties to the Kremlin.
“I shot people,” one of the suspects says in heavily accented Russian, his hands tied and his hair pulled by an interrogator, a black boot under his chin. He said he was born on September 17, 1998 and that his name is Samsudin Faridun.
When asked why, he replies: “For the money.” He claims he was promised half a million rubles (just over $5,000) on Telegram, where he was listening to a preacher.
The man is asked if he was in Turkey on March 4, and he says yes. They were told where gun shops were and he bought weapons there, he claimed.
One of the suspects is seen speaking with the help of an interpreter from Tajikistan. Another is seen being carried from a forest, his face covered in blood, apparently from an ear wound.
During interrogation, he answered that his name was Rajab Alizadeh. He struggled to give his date of birth in Russian.
