Russia says 40 dead, 145 injured in concert hall raid;
Islamic State group claims responsibility
MOSCOW (AP) — Several assailants burst into a large concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing at least 40 people, injuring more than 100 and setting fire to the venue in a brazen attack just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on affiliated channels on social media, which couldn’t be independently verified. It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the attackers after the raid, which state investigators were investigating as terrorism.
The attack, which left the concert hall in flames with a collapsing roof, was the deadliest in Russia in years and came as the country’s war in Ukraine dragged into a third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the raid a “huge tragedy.”
The Kremlin said Putin was informed minutes after the assailants burst into Crocus City Hall, a large music venue on Moscow’s western edge that can accommodate 6,200 people.
The attack took place as crowds gathered for a performance by the Russian rock band Picnic. As Russia’s Federal Security Service reported 40 dead and over 100 injured, some Russian news reports suggested that more could have been trapped by the blaze that erupted after the assailants threw explosives. Health authorities released a list of 145 injured — 115 of them hospitalized, including five children.
Video showed the building on fire, with a huge cloud of smoke rising through the night sky. The street was lit up by the blinking blue lights of dozens of firetrucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles, as fire helicopters buzzed overhead to dump water on the blaze that took hours to contain.
Repeated volleys of gunfire could be heard in videos posted by Russian media and on Telegram channels. One showed two men with rifles moving through the venue. Another showed a man in the auditorium saying the assailants had set it on fire, as gunshots rang out incessantly in the background.
Others showed up to four attackers, armed with assault rifles and wearing caps, shooting screaming people at point-blank range.
Guards at the concert hall didn’t have guns, and some could have been killed at the start of the attack, Russian media reported. Some Russian news outlets suggested the assailants fled before special forces and riot police arrived. Reports said police patrols were looking for several vehicles the attackers could have used to escape.
In a statement posted by its Aamaq news agency, the Islamic State group said it attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk on Moscow’s outskirts, killing and wounding hundreds. It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the claim.
Noting that the IS statement cast its claim as an attack targeting Christians, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on the terrorist group, said it appeared to reflect the group’s strategy of “striking wherever they can as part of a global ‘fight the infidels and apostates everywhere.’”
On March 7, Russia’s top security agency said it thwarted an attack on a synagogue in Moscow by an Islamic State cell, killing several of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. A few days earlier, Russian authorities said six alleged IS members were killed in a shootout in Ingushetia in Russia’s volatile Caucasus region.
It was not clear why the group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, would stage an attack in Russia at this time. Over the years, the extremist group recruited fighters from the former Soviet Union who fought for the group in Syria and Iraq and has claimed several past attacks in the Caucasus and other Russian regions.
As the blaze raged, statements of outrage, shock and support for those affected streamed in from around the world.
Some commentators on Russian social media questioned how authorities, who relentlessly surveil and pressure Kremlin critics, failed to identify the threat and prevent the attack.Russian officials said security has been tightened at Moscow’s airports, railway stations and the capital’s sprawling subway system. Moscow’s mayor canceled all mass gatherings, and theaters 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 and called for ramping up strikes. 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.
French schools sent threatening messages
and beheading videos, says ministry
At least 30 schools in the Paris region have this week received threatening messages accompanied by "shocking" footage of beheadings, the education ministry said on Thursday.
Issued on: 1 min
A pupil enters the Edouard Herriot secondary school, where a student threatened the school's principal with a knife, on the sidelines of a visit by France's minister for Education and Youth, in Chenove, central France, on March 18, 2024. © Arnaud Finistre, AFP
The establishments – mainly secondary schools – have received "serious threats" containing "justification of and incitement to terrorism," a representative of the education ministry told AFP.
The messages came through the ENT digital platform that serves as a link between teachers, pupils and parents; internal emails ; or the Pronote software used by the education ministry.
Investigators were working to "identify the perpetrators", said the ministry, adding that psychological support had been offered to children or adults who had watched the "shocking videos".
According to a police source, at least five high schools in the department of Yvelines, in the west of the Greater Paris region, received bomb threats between Wednesday and Thursday.
Perpetrators "hacked a student's email address" in order to distribute the message and a beheading video, the source said.
In the department of Seine-et-Marne, to the east of the French capital, a secondary school received a message saying that explosives had been hidden throughout the establishment "in the name of Allah", a police source said.
The latest threats follow a flurry of false bomb alerts targeted schools, airport and tourist sites in autumn 2023.
In October, a radicalised Islamist stabbed a former teacher to death in the northern town of Arras.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal was set to chair a meeting on school security on Thursday.
(AFP)
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