Eleven people were arrested after gunmen stormed a concert hall in Moscow and opened fire on the audience, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service told President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said four of those detained were directly involved in the attack.
The newspaper said they were stranded in the Bryansk region of western Russia “not far from the border with Ukraine.”
At least 93 people, including three children, were killed in Friday’s attack, authorities said.
Images shared by Russian state media on Saturday showed a swarm of emergency vehicles still outside the ruins of Crocus City Hall, a shopping mall and music venue that can seat more than 6,000 people in Krasnogorsk, on the western edge of Moscow. It appeared that they were gathering.
The attack came days after President Vladimir Putin consolidated his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.
The attack was Russia’s deadliest in years and comes as fighting in Ukraine enters its third year.
Videos posted online showed gunmen inside the venue shooting civilians at close range. The roof of the theater, where crowds had gathered for a performance by Russian rock band Picnic on Friday, collapsed early Saturday morning as firefighters spent hours extinguishing a fire that broke out during the attack. .
Four of those detained were directly involved in the attack, Tass said.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on its associated social media channels, but neither the Kremlin nor Russian security services have officially claimed responsibility for the attack.
Afghanistan’s Islamic State affiliate said in a statement carried by the Aamaq news agency that it had attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk. The veracity of the claim could not be immediately confirmed.
However, a U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence confirmed that IS was responsible for the attack.
The official said U.S. intelligence agencies have been gathering information in recent weeks that an IS affiliate was planning an attack on Moscow, and that U.S. officials privately shared that information with Russian officials earlier this month. He said he did.
The official was briefed on the matter but was not authorized to publicly discuss intelligence information and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Following the attack, some Russian lawmakers were quick to blame Ukraine. Mykhailo Podlyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, denied any involvement.
“Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist means,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield.”
Since then, messages of anger, shock and support for those affected have poured in from around the world.
On Friday, the United Nations Security Council condemned the “heinous and despicable terrorist attack” and stressed the need to hold perpetrators accountable. UN Secretary-General António Guterres also condemned the terrorist attack “in the strongest possible terms”, the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people lined up to donate blood and plasma on Saturday morning in mainland Moscow, Russia’s Health Ministry said.
Putin, who extended his rule over Russia for another six years in this week’s presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, said Western warnings of possible terrorist attacks were an attempt to intimidate Russians. publicly denounced.
“These all resemble public threats and are attempts to frighten and destabilize our society,” he said earlier this week.
In October 2015, a bomb planted by the Islamic State group shot down a Russian airliner over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russians on vacation from Egypt.
The group operates primarily in Syria and Iraq, but also Afghanistan and Africa, and claims to have carried out several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in the past few years.
It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
