Russian authorities have arrested four suspects as a suburban Moscow concert hall where gunmen opened fire on concertgoers on Saturday was reduced to charred, smoldering ruins, killing more than 130 people in the attack.
President Vladimir Putin claimed they were captured while fleeing to Ukraine.
Kyiv has strongly denied any involvement in Friday’s attack on Krasnogorsk’s Krokos Town Hall Concert Hall, for which the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.
U.S. intelligence officials have obtained intelligence indicating that the Islamic State Khorasan, the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, was responsible for the Moscow attack.
Putin did not mention the Islamic State group in his address to the nation, and Kyiv has accused him and other Russian politicians of falsely linking Ukraine to the attack to fan Russia’s war in Ukraine, which recently entered its third year.
“Islamic State bears full responsibility for this attack. Ukraine had no involvement,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
Watson said that in early March, the United States shared information with Russia about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow related to the threat from the Islamic State Khorasan group and issued a public warning to Americans in Russia.
Putin says authorities have detained 11 people
Putin said authorities detained 11 people in the attack and injured more than 100 people. He called it a “bloody, brutal act of terror” and said Russian authorities captured the four suspects as they tried to escape to Ukraine through a prepared “window.” For them, it’s on the Ukrainian side of the border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky angrily dismissed Moscow’s accusations, saying Putin and his deputies were trying to shift blame onto Ukraine while treating his own people as “sacrifice.”
“They are burning down our cities – and they are trying to blame Ukraine,” he said in a statement on his messaging app channel. “They torture and rape our people and blame them. They drive hundreds of thousands of terrorists onto our Ukrainian soil to fight against us and they don’t care what happens inside their own country.”
Russian media showed videos apparently showing the detention and interrogation of suspects, with one suspect telling cameras that an unidentified assistant to an Islamic preacher contacted him via a messaging app and paid to take part in the raid.
Russian news reports said the gunman was a citizen of Tajikistan, a predominantly Muslim former Soviet republic in Central Asia that borders Afghanistan. As many as 1.5 million Tajiks work in Russia, many of whom hold Russian citizenship.
Tajikistan’s foreign ministry denied initial reports in Russian media that named several other Tajiks as suspected participants in the attack, but did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arrests.
Many Russian hard-liners have called for a crackdown on Tajik immigrants, but Putin appeared to reject the idea, saying “no force can sow poisonous seeds of discord, panic or disunity in our multi-ethnic society.”
He declared Sunday a day of mourning and said extra security measures were implemented across Russia.
The death toll was 133, making it Russia’s worst attack in years. Authorities said the death toll was still likely to rise.
The raid is a major embarrassment for the Russian leader, who comes just days after he consolidated his six-year rule over the country in a vote that It was the harshest crackdown on dissent since the Soviet era.
Some commentators on Russian social media questioned why authorities, which ruthlessly suppress any opposition activity and silence independent media, failed to prevent the attacks despite U.S. warnings.
Attack after warning
The attack came two weeks after the U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a notice urging Americans to avoid crowded places because of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large gatherings in Moscow, including concerts. Several other Western embassies repeated the warning. Earlier this week, Putin denounced the warning as an attempt to intimidate Russians.
Investigators were searching the charred remains of the lobby for more victims Saturday. Russia’s health ministry said hundreds of people lined up in Moscow to donate blood and plasma.
Pictures shared by Russian state media showed emergency vehicles still gathering outside the ruins of the concert hall, which can accommodate more than 6,000 people and has hosted many large events.
Dave Primov, who survived the attack, told The Associated Press that the gunman “shot directly into the row of people.” He described the chaos in the hall as concertgoers scrambled to escape: “People started to panic, started running and bumping into each other. Some fell, some stepped on them.”
After he and others climbed out of the lobby into a nearby utility room, he said he heard the crackle of small explosives and smelled something burning as the attackers set fire to the building. When they left the massive building 25 minutes later, it was engulfed in flames.
“If it had been any longer, we would have been trapped in the fire,” Primov said.
Messages poured in from around the world expressing outrage, shock and support for the victims and their families.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the United States condemned the attack and noted that the Islamic State group was “a common terrorist enemy that must be defeated everywhere.”
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