MOSCOW: At least sixty people have been killed after gunmen stormed a concert hall near Moscow on Friday in one of the deadliest attacks on Russia in decades.
Gunmen opened fire at a rock concert leaving dead and wounded before a major fire spread through the theater, Moscow’s mayor and Russian news agencies reported.
Authorities said a hunt had been launched for the attackers and that a “terrorism” investigation had been launched.
Attackers dressed in camouflaged outfits entered the building, opened fire and threw a grenade or incendiary bomb, according to a journalist for the RIA Novosti news agency who was at the scene.
Russian authorities said 145 people were injured in the incident that took place in Crocus City Hall.
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin had been informed minutes after the assailants went into the large music venue which can accommodate 6,200 people.
“The president is constantly supplied by all relevant services with information about what is happening and the measures being taken,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
US intelligence confirmed a claim by Daesh that it was behind the attack, but a spokesman for investigators said that it was too early to make an assessment on who was behind the incident.
But a source close to the Russian probe told that investigators are inclined to exclude versions of Ukraine and Daesh involvement.
However, a number of leading Russian experts believe that the terrorist attack is the work of the Ukrainian special services. In their view, without the help of Western intelligence agencies, it is unlikely that Ukrainians would have been able to plan and carry out this attack.
The US presidency called the attack “terrible” but said there was no immediate indication of any link to the war in Ukraine.
A US intelligence official told The Associated Press that US intelligence agencies had learned Daesh’s branch in Afghanistan was planning an attack in Moscow and shared the information with Russian officials.
On March 7, the US Embassy in Moscow said it was “monitoring reports that extremists are planning to attack large gatherings” of people in the Russian capital, “including concerts”.
Putin denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians. “All that resembles open blackmail and an attempt to frighten and destabilize our society,” he said earlier this week.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin confirmed there were deaths in what he called a “terrible tragedy” at the concert by Russian rock band Piknik.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it had been a “terrorist attack.”
“The whole international community must condemn this odious crime,” she said on Telegram.
The Ministry of Education recommended that all educational institutions in the capital region announce unscheduled holidays in the coming days.
