MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that authorities have detained 11 people in an underground facility. Attack on a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow At least 115 people were killed and the vast venue was reduced to smoldering ruins.
In a speech to the nation, President Putin called it a “bloody, barbaric act of terrorism” and said all four people directly involved had been detained. He suggested they were trying to cross the border into Ukraine, which he said was an attempt to create a “window” to help them escape.
Ukraine strongly denies involvement in the attack. President Putin said on Saturday that additional security measures had been imposed across the country and that March 24 had been declared a day of national mourning.
The Afghan branch of the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for Friday's attack in a statement posted on relevant social media channels. A U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U.S. government agencies have confirmed that the group was behind the attack.
The attack, Russia's deadliest in years, came days after Putin tightened his grip In a highly organized electoral landslide and over the country's national power. war in ukraine Entering the third year.
Some Russian lawmakers condemned Ukraine immediately after the attack. However, 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.”
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry also denied involvement and accused Moscow of using the attack to drum up enthusiasm for the war effort.
“We believe that such accusations will further fuel anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russian society, create a situation that will increase the mobilization of Russian citizens to participate in criminal aggression against our country, and undermine Ukraine's credibility in the eyes of the international community. “We believe this is a planned provocation by the Kremlin to bring down the community,” the ministry said in a statement.
Images shared by Russian state media on Saturday showed emergency vehicles still converging outside the ruins of Crocus City Hall, which has a maximum capacity of more than 6,000 people.
Videos posted online showed gunmen inside the venue shooting civilians at close range. Russian news reports, citing authorities and witnesses, said the attackers threw an explosive device, which caused the fire. The roof of a theater where crowds had gathered for a performance by Russian rock band Picnic collapsed early Saturday morning as firefighters worked for hours to extinguish the blaze.
The Islamic State's Afghan branch 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.
A U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies have been gathering information in recent weeks that an Islamic State affiliate was planning an attack on Moscow, and that U.S. officials shared that information with Russian authorities earlier this month. He said that he had privately shared the information with others.
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.
Messages of anger, shock and support for the victims and their families 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 in Moscow on Saturday, 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.
A terrorist bombing occurred in October 2015. planted by IS It 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.
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Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.