The Russian Investigative Committee has raised the death toll in Friday's attack on the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Moscow to 115, according to its latest report published this morning. as Emergency services extract lifeless bodies from the rubble of the premises, set on fire by the attackers. The investigating agency, in another previous statement also published on its Telegram account, attributed the deaths to gunshot wounds caused by those responsible for the attack and to asphyxiation due to the fire in the room during the attack.
The investigating agency, in a statement published on its Telegram account, has attributed the deaths to the gunshot wounds caused by those responsible for the attack and asphyxiation due to the fire in the room during the attack.
The Foreign Ministry attributed the tragedy, which occurred in an auditorium in Krasnogorsk, a suburb on the northwest edge of the Russian capital, to “a bloody terrorist attack.” “The entire international community must condemn this heinous crime!” he said. Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Telegram. The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyaninannounced the cancellation of “all sporting, cultural” and public events during the weekend.
According to a reporter from the RIA Novosti agency, people in camouflage uniforms burst into the concert hall and opened fire before throwing “a grenade or an incendiary bomb, causing a fire.” “The people who were in the room fell to the ground to protect themselves from the gunshots for 15 or 20 minutes” and many managed to “crawl out,” he said.
The rescue services, cited by the Interfax agency, reported on a “group of two to five unidentified people, with combat uniforms and automatic weapons,” who “opened fire on the security agents at the entrance to the room.” concerts” and before “starting shooting at the public.” According to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, firefighters managed to evacuate about a hundred people who were in the basement of the site.
There are also operations underway to “save people who are on the roof of the building,” he explained. The TASS press agency indicated that about a third of the building is on fire. Videos spread on social networks show large columns of black smoke coming out of the building. Security forces went to the scene, Russian agencies said. The attack occurred during a concert by the Russian rock group Piknik, whose members were evacuated, TASS said.
The current channels Baza and Mash, close to the security forces on Telegram, published videos in which at least two armed men are seen advancing in the lobby of the complex. In other sequences, corpses and groups of people are seen rushing toward the exit. Other images show spectators hiding behind seats or evacuating the room.
The US condemns the attack
The White House conveyed its condolences to the victims of the “terrible” shooting. “The images are simply horrifying and hard to look at,” said the National Security Council spokesman. John Kirby. Ukraine assured that it had “nothing to do” with the attack while the former Russian president Dmiti Medvedev He stated that Russia will “destroy” the Ukrainian leaders if it is proven that they are involved in the attack. «If it is established that these are terrorists of the Kyiv regime (…), they will be located and destroyed mercilessly, like terrorists. Including the leaders of the State that committed such an atrocity,” Medvedev, number two on the Russian Security Council, stated on Telegram.
In recent days, Russia has been the target of attacks by anti-government Russian fighters and bombings from Ukraine, which has faced Russian military intervention since 2022. Russia has already been the target of numerous attacks by Islamist groups and shootings without political motives or attributed to unbalanced individuals.
In 2002, a group of Chechen fighters took 912 people hostage in the Moscow theater of Dubrovka to demand the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. The harrowing hostage taking ended with an intervention by the special forces and the death of 130 people, almost all of them asphyxiated by the gas used by the military.