Some victims of Moscow shooting in critical condition, authorities say – as it happened

This blog has now closed. You can read our full report on the attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow here

The Islamic State on Saturday released on its Telegram channels what it said is footage of the attack on a concert hall near Moscow, Reuters reports.

The 1.31-minute video shows a close-up view of one of the gunmen opening fire on several people as he enters what appears to be the concert hall.

Hello to our liveblog readers coming to us for news on the massacre at a pop concert on the outskirts of Moscow late on Friday.

It’s just after 1am in Moscow and the official death toll remains at 133. Some of the wounded and injured have been described as being in critical condition, and many people still do not have confirmation of the whereabouts of their loved ones. Victims were taken to several hospitals for treatment.

The burnt-out shell of the Crocus City Hall building, where four gunmen are reported to have shot people and then set off fire bombs, is still smouldering and firefighters and investigators remain on the scene. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, but while Russia says it has the attackers in custody, it has made no mention of the Islamic State and has only claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine was involved, which Ukraine denies.

Here’s where things stand:

• US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson issued a statement on Saturday saying that the Islamic State bears sole responsibility for the deadly attack near Moscow on Friday and there was no Ukrainian involvement “whatsoever”. The US government a few weeks ago shared information with Russia about a planned attack in Moscow and issued a public advisory to Americans in Russia on March 7, Watson added.

• The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, used his nightly public address to condemn Russia for claiming that Ukraine had been involved in the attack and was seeking to help the attackers escape. Calling Russian president Vladimir Putin a “low-life”, Zelenskiy added: “What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious: Putin and the other scum are just trying to blame it on someone else … They always have the same methods.”

• Russian television has aired footage of the detention and questioning of four men the authorities say are suspected of carrying out the deadly attack on a Moscow-area concert hall. Russia’s Channel One television showed footage of four suspects and their damaged white Renault car. It said they had been captured by special forces in the village of Khatsun in the western Bryansk region, which is close to borders with Ukraine and Belarus.

• Neither Vladimir Putin, nor any of his government representatives, have responded to claims by the Islamic State religious terrorist group that they were responsible for the attack on a pop concert in the Moscow suburbs on Friday night.

• Several security analysts have said that the claim of responsibility by the Islamic State for the massacre of Russian concertgoers appears to be plausible and fits with a pattern of previous marauding attacks by Islamist militants.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, currently in the Middle East, issued a statement on Saturday afternoon that the US condemns “terrorism in all its forms and stand[s] in solidarity with the people of Russia in grieving the loss of life from this horrific event”. He called the attack “a heinous crime”.

• The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group said on Saturday that four of its militants carried out an attack on a concert hall in a Moscow suburb that Russian authorities said had killed at least 133 people, and that they used firebombs among its weapons

• The four suspected gunmen detained after the deadly attack on a concert hall near Moscow are all foreign citizens, Russia’s interior ministry said.

• US intelligence gathered information just this month that ISPK, a branch of the Islamic State group based in Afghanistan, was eyeing Russia for a terrorist attack, the New York Times reported.

• Putin told the Russian people that Ukraine is linked to the Crocus City Hall terror attack. In a video address lasting five-and-a-half minutes on Saturday, the newly re-elected Russian president said Russian security forces believed they had apprehended all four direct participants in the attack, who they said were caught heading for Ukraine, which they said was preparing to receive them over the border. Kyiv has rubbished the claims.

• Putin described the attack as a “bloody, barbaric terrorist act”, and said the victims were “dozens of peaceful, innocent people – our compatriots, including children, teenagers and women”. He said the Russian Federation would “identify and punish everyone who prepared the terrorist attack”.

• Ukraine has denied any link to the attack. Presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said attempts to connect the two were “absolutely untenable”. He said: “Ukraine has not the slightest connection to this incident. Ukraine has a full-scale war with Russia and will solve the problem of Russia’s aggression on the battlefield.” Neither Putin nor the FSB publicly presented any proof of a link with Ukraine.

• On Saturday morning, 107 people remained in hospital after the attack, including three children, one of whom is described as being in critical condition. After a drive to receive blood donations in Moscow, deputy prime minister Tatyana Golikova said “there is enough medicine, blood and dressing materials”.

• Putin has declared Sunday 24 March a day of national mourning. People have been laying flowers and toys as a tribute to the victims at the site of the attack, as well as outside Russian embassies all around the world.

• Images from inside the venue show that the auditorium has been completely gutted by fire and the roof has collapsed. Russian authorities say people died both from gunshot wounds and the effects of the fire.

• The terrorist attack has been widely condemned around the world. Notwithstanding tensions caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Britain’s foreign secretary David Cameron, European commission president Ursula von der Leyen and French president Emmanuel Macron have been among those condemning the attack and offering condolences. Putin spoke to the leaders of Belarus and Uzbekistan by phone. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also offered his support, saying terrorism is “the common enemy of humanity”.

The Islamic State bears sole responsibility for the deadly attack near Moscow on Friday and there was no Ukrainian involvement, the US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said on Saturday, Reuters reports.

The US government early this month shared information with Russia about a planned attack in Moscow and issued a public advisory to Americans in Russia on 7 March, Watson said in a statement:

ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.

Very late on Friday, Watson posted on X/Twitter about US warnings relayed to Russia.

And:

Here’s more on the relationship between the Islamic State and Russia and between Tajikistan and the branch of the religious terrorism group based chiefly but not wholly in the Tajik neighbour of Afghanistan.

More, including from Paweł Wójcik, an independent analyst who’s quoted in a Guardian piece written by Russian affairs reporter Pjotr Sauer.

Wójcik, a specialist in Islamic State messaging and propaganda, said IS messaging after the Moscow attack was similar to that of previous attacks that the group claimed in Tehran and Kabul.

“The messaging we saw from IS following the attack was standard,” Wójcik told the Guardian. Read Sauer’s full piece here.

“Deadly Moscow Attack Shatters Putin’s Security Promise to Russians” is the headline of a New York Times analysis piece, with the line below saying: “The tragedy outside Moscow is a blow to a leader riding an aura of confidence only days after a stage-managed election victory.”

The report says, in extract: “Less than a week ago, President Vladimir V Putin of Russia claimed a fifth term with his highest-ever share of the vote, using a stage-managed election to show the nation and the world that he was firmly in control.

“Just days later came a searing counterpoint: His vaunted security apparatus failed to prevent Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years.

“The assault on Friday, which killed at least 133 people at a concert hall in suburban Moscow, was a blow to Mr Putin’s aura as a leader for whom national security is paramount. That is especially true after two years of a war in Ukraine that he describes as key to Russia’s survival – and which he cast as his top priority after the election last Sunday.

The election demonstrated a seemingly confident victory. And suddenly, against the backdrop of a confident victory, there’s this demonstrative humiliation,” Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political scientist, told the New York Times in a phone interview from Moscow.

Mr Putin seemed blindsided by the assault. It took him more than 19 hours to address the nation about the attack, the deadliest in Russia since the 2004 school siege in Beslan, in the country’s south, which claimed 334 lives. When he did, the Russian leader said nothing about the mounting evidence that a branch of the Islamic State committed the attack.

“Instead, Mr Putin hinted that Ukraine was behind the tragedy.”

You can read the whole report here.

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Russian lawmaker Alexander Khinshtein said the attackers suspected of shooting up and burning the concert hall near Moscow had fled in a Renault vehicle that was spotted by police in Bryansk region, about 340 km (210 miles) southwest of Moscow on Friday night. He said a car chase ensued after they disobeyed orders to stop, Reuters reports.

Khinshtein said a pistol, a magazine for an assault rifle, and passports from Tajikistan were found in the car. Tajikistan is a mainly Muslim Central Asian state that used to be part of the Soviet Union.

Here is some interesting extrapolation.

Hundreds of Russian firefighters are still dealing with the burnt-out shell of the concert hall in Krasnogorsk on the outskirts of Moscow, while security forces across the country remain on high alert.

It’s coming up to midnight in Moscow on Saturday and many people are still reported missing from the assumed terrorist attack that took place on Friday night when thousands were packed into the Crocus City Hall for a pop concert.

Relatives of people who had been attending the concert are still waiting desperately for news, following the Russian authorities reporting that 133 people had been killed and at least 145 wounded or injured and rushed to numerous hospitals.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said 11 suspects had been apprehended and of those four were the chief perpetrators who breached the concert hall and shot people, then lit the building on fire. Interrogations are continuing, the authorities say.

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Just a few more details from Kyiv now.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Saturday that Russian president Vladimir Putin was seeking ways to divert blame for a massacre at a concert hall near Moscow on Friday, Reuters reports.

He said it was “absolutely predictable” that Putin had remained silent for 24 hours before tying the shooting rampage to Ukraine.

He added that the hundreds of thousands of what he called “terrorists” that Putin had sent to fight and be killed in the war in Ukraine would “definitely be enough” to have stopped terrorist attacks at home.

There’s a bit more from AFP. Zelensky announced, after Putin said the suspects had been fleeing towards Ukraine:

What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious: Putin and the other scum are just trying to blame it on someone else … They always have the same methods.

He continued:

That low-life Putin, instead of dealing with his Russian citizens, addressing them, was silent for a day, thinking about how to bring it to Ukraine. Everything is absolutely predictable.

The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is speaking out now saying that Russian president Vladimir Putin and others are seeking to divert the blame for the Moscow concert massacre onto Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Russia invaded Ukraine just over two years ago, and despite being pushed back from its all-out offensive – aimed at taking the capital Kyiv and the country – to occupying a portion of eastern and southern Ukraine, the war is grinding on with Ukraine’s counteroffensive since last summer now struggling.

Putin earlier today claimed that Ukraine had collaborated with the terrorist suspects who massacred at least 133 people on Friday night at a pop concert.

Zelenskiy is now saying it was “absolutely predictable” that Putin waited until the day after, then found a way to tie the massacre to Ukraine, Reuters reports.

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For the past few hours, there have been varying and pretty grim reports that a suspect was captured by Russian federal agents, who then cut off one of his ears, which the AFP has now also reported. Our correspondent Pjotr Sauer has been monitoring all this and selectively posting and re-posting.

This:

And this:

And this:

The Russian interior ministry said earlier on Saturday that all four suspected gunmen were foreign nationals, the AFP reports.

Russian television on Saturday aired footage of the detention and questioning of four men suspected of carrying out the deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday night.

A Russian lawmaker has said some of those detained are from Tajikistan, an impoverished post-Soviet state that borders Afghanistan and whose nationals have participated in previous Islamic State attacks.

What were you doing at Crocus?” a young bearded man seated on the ground is asked.

“I shot people ... for money,” he answers in broken Russian. He goes on to say he was offered “half a million rubles and had received half of it on a bank card”.

That’s about US$5,425. The man added that the people who had hired them had supplied them with the weapons, corresponding on the Telegram secure-messaging platform without giving their names.

The footage also shows one suspect being led along a snowy track in a forest. The dark-haired man in a light brown T-shirt has blood pouring down his cheek from his ear.

He too is shown being questioned with a bandage wrapped around his head, his lips and nose bloodied and swollen.

Asked what the suspected attackers did with their weapons, he says they had been left “somewhere on the road”.

Earlier, a graphic video was posted online, apparently showing the detention of the same suspect.

It showed a man in camouflage cutting off part of the ear of a dark-haired man, trying to make him eat it and then hitting him on the face.

Russian television showed other suspects with cuts to their faces.

Russian television on Saturday aired footage of the detention and questioning of four men suspected of carrying out the deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Russia’s Channel One television showed footage of four suspects and their damaged white Renault car.

It said they had been captured by special forces in the village of Khatsun in the western Bryansk region, which is close to borders with Ukraine and Belarus.

In footage shot at night and in daylight, the detained men speak Russian with an accent.

The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for Friday night’s attack, when a group of gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow and set it ablaze.

They killed at least 133 people.

The decimated remains of the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, on the outskirts of Moscow, are still smouldering.

It’s just gone 10pm in the Russian capital and crews are still working at the fire-gutted remains of the concert hall.

Russian authorities say they have 11 people in custody, including the four main gunmen who shot people in the hall.

The Islamic State, the religious terrorist group that claims responsibility for the attack, claimed the gunmen got away, however.

The exact details of what happened have yet to be independently verified or officially established.

None of the claims by ISKP, an offshoot of the Islamic State in central Asia, based mainly in Afghanistan, have been publicly acknowledged by Russian authorities. ISKP stands for Islamic State Khorasan Province.

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Hello, again, global blog readers. It’s just gone 9pm in Moscow. We’ll continue to bring you all the developments in news from the apparent terrorist attack that occurred on the outskirts of the Russian capital on Friday night.

Here’s where things stand:

• Neither the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, nor any of his government representatives have responded to claims by the Islamic State religious terrorist group that they were responsible for the attack on a pop concert in the Moscow suburbs on Friday night.

• Several security analysts have said that the claim of responsibility by the Islamic State for the massacre of Russian concertgoers appears to be plausible and fits with a pattern of previous marauding attacks by Islamist militants.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, currently in the Middle East, issued a statement on Saturday afternoon that the US condemns “terrorism in all its forms and stand[s] in solidarity with the people of Russia in grieving the loss of life from this horrific event”. He called the attack “a heinous crime”.

• The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group said on Saturday that four of its militants carried out an attack on a concert hall in a Moscow suburb that Russian authorities said has killed at least 133 people, and that they used firebombs among its weapons

• The four suspected gunmen detained after a deadly attack on a concert hall near Moscow are all foreign citizens, Russia’s interior ministry said.

• US intelligence gathered information just this month that ISPK, a branch of the Islamic State group based in Afghanistan, was eyeing Russia for a terrorist attack, the New York Times has reported.

Police and Russian special forces still surround the concert hall on Saturday. Here are some views from passers-by, blood donors and emergency workers, in reporting via the AFP agency. Most only wanted to give the wire service their first name. Maxim, a 37-year-old who works for the ruling United Russia political party, said:

Yesterday was a great tragedy for all of us. We cannot remain indifferent.

Maxim said that he knew people who had been inside the hall and “went through hell”, but that all were still alive.

On advertising hoardings and at bus stops across Moscow, posters were put up showing a candle and the slogan: “22/03/24 - We mourn.”

With steady rain falling, about 150 people waited outside one blood donor centre in north-west Moscow earlier on Saturday following an appeal by authorities. Alexandra, a 35-year-old air logistics specialist, said:

I came to help. When you can see what happened from your balcony, you understand what the reality is.

Alexandra added that all citizens had a “duty” to give aid, and that she lived near the Crocus City Hall, which had been almost completely burned down in the attack.

Vladislav, an 18-year-old student also in the blood donation queue, said:

When you see the situation you don’t want to remain isolated, you want to help.

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Russians in shock and mourning.

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Sorrow.

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Candles.

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It’s almost 9pm in Moscow now and night has fallen.

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