After the shock, meditation. Russia is observing a day of national mourning on Sunday March 24 after the attack in a concert hall near Moscow. Individuals broke into the Crocus City Hall building on Friday evening, before opening fire with automatic weapons on the crowd and starting a fire with an flammable liquid, according to Russian investigators. It is the deadliest attack in Russia in twenty years, and the bloodiest to have been claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS). Follow our live stream.
At least 133 people died. The toll from this attack, very high, with around a hundred injured, is still provisional and is expected to increase further, according to the authorities. The search for bodies under the rubble continues, two days after this attack, the deadliest on European soil claimed by ISIS in Europe. Heavy equipment arrived on site Saturday evening to dismantle damaged structures and remove debris, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said.
A day of mourning decreed by Vladimir Putin. The Russian president spoke at midday on Saturday. In a televised speech, he denounced an act “barbaric terrorist” and promised to punish the guilty. Vladimir Putin also announced that “the four authors” of the attack had been arrested “as they were heading towards Ukraine”, without mentioning the IS claim. These four “foreign citizens” were captured in the Bryansk region, bordering Ukraine and Belarus, according to authorities.
Despite ISIS’s claim, many questions remain. According to Russian media and MP Alexander Khinstein, some of the suspects are from Tajikistan. The authorities of this Central Asian country said they had not “did not receive confirmation from the Russian authorities” on this subject. The security services (FSB) claimed that the suspects had “proper contacts on the Ukrainian side” and were planning to flee to this country. “Ukraine has not the slightest link with the incident”insisted the adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, who rejected accusations “absurd”.