Guards at the concert hall didn’t have guns, and some could have been killed at the start of the attack, Russian media reported. It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the assailants, but some Russian news outlets suggested that they fled before special forces and riot police arrived.
As the blaze continued to rage late into the night, statements of outrage, shock and support to those affected streamed in from around the world.
A Russian national guard secures an area as a massive blaze seen over the Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow.Credit: AP
Russian authorities said security has been tightened at Moscow’s airports, railway stations and the capital’s sprawling subway system. Moscow’s mayor cancelled all mass gatherings and theatres and museums shut for the weekend. Other Russian regions also tightened security.
The Kremlin didn’t immediately blame anyone for the attack, but some Russian lawmakers were quick to accuse Ukraine of being behind it. Hours before the attack, the Russian military launched a sweeping barrage on Ukraine’s power system, crippling the country’s biggest hydroelectric plant and other energy facilities and leaving more than a million people without electricity.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, denied Ukraine’s involvement in the concert hall attack.
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“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, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said that he couldn’t yet speak about all the details but that “the images are just horrible. And just hard to watch.”
“Our thoughts are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting attack,” Kirby said. “There are some moms and dads and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who haven’t gotten the news yet. This is going to be a tough day.”
The attack followed a statement issued earlier this month by the US Embassy in Moscow that urged the Americans to avoid crowded places in the Russian capital in view of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large gatherings in Moscow, including concerts. The warning was repeated by several other Western embassies.
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Asked about the embassy’s notice issued on March 7, Kirby referred the question to the State Department, adding: “I don’t think that was related to this specific attack.”
Responding to a question about whether Washington had any prior information about the assault, Kirby responded: “I’m not aware of any advance knowledge that we had of this terrible attack.”
Putin, who extended his grip on Russia for another six years in the March 15-17 presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, earlier this week denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians.
Russia was shaken by a series of deadly terror attacks in the early 2000s during the fighting with separatists in the Russian province of Chechnya.
In October 2002, Chechen militants took about 800 people hostage at a Moscow theatre. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the building and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters died, most of them from the effects of narcotic gas Russian forces used to subdue the attackers.
And in September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a school in Beslan in southern Russia taking hundreds of hostages. The siege ended in a bloodbath two days later and more than 330 people, about half of them children, were killed.
AP
Source Agencies
