Several attackers stormed a major concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing at least 40 people, injuring more than 100 and setting the venue on fire in a brazen attack days after President Vladimir Putin consolidated his power. in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on linked social media channels, which could not be independently verified. It was not immediately clear what happened to the attackers after the raid, which state investigators were investigating as terrorism.
The attack, which left the concert hall in flames as the roof collapsed, was Russia's deadliest in years and came as the country's war in Ukraine dragged into a third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the raid a “tremendous tragedy”.
The Kremlin said Putin was informed minutes after the attackers broke into Crocus City Hall, a large music venue in Moscow's west end that can accommodate 6,200 people.
The attack occurred as crowds gathered for a performance by Russian rock band Picnic. As Russia's Federal Security Service reported 40 dead and more than 100 injured, some Russian news reports said more could have been trapped in the blaze that erupted after the attackers threw explosives. Health authorities released a list of 145 injured – 115 of them are in hospital, including five children.
The video shows the building burning, with a huge cloud of smoke rising into the night sky. The street was illuminated by the flashing blue lights of dozens of fire trucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles as firefighting helicopters buzzed overhead to drop water on the blaze that took hours to contain.
The prosecutor's office said several men in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and shot the spectators.
Repeated gunshots could be heard in videos posted by Russian media and on Telegram channels. One showed two men with rifles moving through the space. Another showed a man in the auditorium saying the attackers had set it on fire as gunfire rang out in the background.
Others showed up to four attackers, armed with assault rifles and wearing beanies, shooting screaming people at close range.
The guards at the concert hall were unarmed and some could have been killed at the start of the attack, Russian media reported. Some Russian news agencies reported that the attackers fled before special forces and riot police arrived. Reports said that police patrols were looking for several vehicles that the attackers could have used to escape.
In a statement published by the Aamaq news agency, the Islamic State group said it attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk on the outskirts of Moscow, killing and wounding hundreds. It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the claim.
Noting that the IS statement made its claim an attack targeting Christians, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on the terror group, said it appeared to reflect the group's strategy to “hit where they can as part of a global “war on infidels and apostates everywhere.”
On March 7, Russia's top security service said it had foiled an attack on a synagogue in Moscow by an Islamic State cell, killing several of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. Days earlier, Russian authorities said six suspected IS members were killed in a shootout in Ingushetia, Russia's volatile Caucasus region.
It was unclear why the group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, would attack Russia at this time. Over the years, the extremist group has recruited fighters from the former Soviet Union who have fought for the group in Syria and Iraq, and has carried out several previous attacks in the Caucasus and other Russian regions.
As the blaze raged, expressions of outrage, shock and support for those affected poured in from around the world.
Some commentators on Russian social media questioned how the authorities, who relentlessly monitor and crack down on critics of the Kremlin, failed to identify the threat and prevent the attack.
Russian officials said security measures had been stepped up at Moscow's airports, train stations and the capital's extensive metro system. Moscow's mayor canceled all mass gatherings and theaters and museums were closed for the weekend. Other Russian regions have also stepped up security measures.
The Kremlin did not immediately blame anyone for the attack, but some Russian lawmakers were quick to blame Ukraine and called for the strikes to be stepped up. Hours before the attack, the Russian military unleashed a sweeping barrage on Ukraine's electricity system, crippling the country's largest hydroelectric plant and other energy facilities and leaving more than a million people without power.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council, said that if Ukraine's involvement in the attack was proven, all those involved “must be tracked down and killed without mercy, including officials of the state that committed such an outrage.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukrainian involvement.
“Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” he posted on X. “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield.”
John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said he couldn't talk about the details yet, but “the images are just horrific. And it's just hard to watch.”
“Our thoughts will be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting,” Kirby said.
The attack followed a statement earlier this month from the US Embassy in Moscow urging Americans to avoid crowded areas in the Russian capital in the face of “imminent” extremist plans to target large gatherings, including concerts. The warning, issued hours after Russia's top security service said it had destroyed an Islamic State group plotting an attack on a synagogue, was echoed by several other Western embassies.
Asked about the embassy's announcement on March 7, Kirby referred the question to the State Department, adding: “I don't think it's related to this particular attack.”
Asked whether Washington had prior information about the attack, Kirby replied: “I am not aware of any prior knowledge that we had of this terrible attack.”
Putin, who extended his control of Russia for another six years in this week's presidential election after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians. “All this looks like open blackmail and an attempt to fear 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 with separatists in the Russian province of Chechnya.
In October 2002, Chechen fighters took about 800 people hostage in a Moscow theater. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the building and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters died, most of them from the effects of drug gas used by Russian forces to subdue the attackers.
And in September 2004, about 30 Chechen fighters seized a school in Beslan in southern Russia, taking hundreds hostage. The siege ended in a bloodbath two days later and more than 330 people, about half of them children, were killed.
