Survivor recounts Moscow concert hall attack, as families wonder if loved ones are alive

A survivor of the Moscow concert hall attack says he scrambled up the escalator to escape the music venue on Friday - and couldn't ex‐ plain how he managed to stay calm despite being so close to the attackers.

"I don't know why there wasn't fear. I'm completely calm and I tried to do some‐ thing. I tried to get out, and I got out," Kirill Smolyaninov told CBC News on Sunday.

The attack, which has been claimed by an affiliate of ISIS, killed more than 130 people at the Crocus City Hall and is the deadliest on Russ‐ ian soil in years.

Smolyaninov, a freelance photographer who went to record the band Piknik, was in the entrance area away from the main hall when chaos broke out, and man‐ aged to capture a short video as he escaped.

"I saw the assailants. They were about 20 metres away from me, probably 15 metres away," Smolyaninov said. "I grabbed my camera and started shooting."

The clip shows a young woman running past him, yelling, before shots are heard. A man in front of him, who Smolyaninov says is an acquaintance of his, then ap‐ pears to be setting up a bar‐ ricade with tables.

"I waved to them. I said, 'Let's go,' and so forth. But somehow they didn't react. But it's also a state of shock, maybe. I don't know," he said.

"I know that after that they died."

The gunshots get louder in the video as Smolyaninov makes his way up an escala‐ tor, when he says the as‐ sailants were firing at him.

"When I was on the esca‐ lator, yes, for sure they were shooting at me," he said.

After making it out, Smolyaninov says he tried to go back in to help and saw "a lot" of dead bodies on the street.

"This is a tragedy, it is a real tragedy. People died, real people who were alive. They had kids," he said. "They were living, enjoying life."

National day of mourn‐ ing

Russia observed a day of national mourning on Sun‐ day.

Events at cultural institu‐ tions were cancelled, flags were lowered to half-mast and television entertainment and advertising were sus‐ pended, according to state news agency RIA Novosti. A steady stream of people ad‐ ded to a makeshift memorial near the burnt-out concert hall, creating a huge mound of flowers.

As rescuers continue to search the damaged building and the death toll rises as more bodies are found, some families still don't know if rel‐ atives who went to the event targeted by gunmen on Friday are alive. Moscow's Department of Health said Sunday it has begun identify‐ ing the bodies of those killed via DNA testing, which will need at least two weeks.

Igor Pogadaev was des‐ perately seeking any details of his wife's whereabouts af‐ ter she went to the concert and stopped responding to his messages.

He hasn't seen a message from Yana Pogadaeva since she sent her husband two photos from the music venue.

No information from hotline

After Pogadaev saw the reports of gunmen opening fire on concertgoers, he rushed to the site, but could‐ n't find her in the numerous ambulances or among the hundreds of people who had made their way out of the venue.

"I went around, searched, I asked everyone, I showed photographs. No one saw anything, no one could say anything," Pogadaev told the AP in a video message.

He watched flames bursting out of the building as he made frantic calls to a hotline for relatives of the victims, but received no in‐ formation.

WATCH | Sounds of gun‐ shots, panic as concert hall attacked:

As the death toll mounted on Saturday, Pogodaev scoured hospitals in the Russian capital and the Moscow region, looking for information on newly admit‐ ted patients.

But his wife wasn't among the 154 reported injured, nor on the list of 50 victims au‐ thorities have already identi‐ fied, he said.

Refusing to believe that his wife could be one of the 137 people who died in the attack, Pogadaev still hasn't gone home.

"I couldn't be alone any‐ more, it's very difficult, so I drove to my friend's," he said. "Now at least I'll be with someone."

The Moscow Region's Emergency Situations Min‐ istry posted a video Sunday showing equipment disman‐ tling the damaged music venue to give rescuers ac‐ cess.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin appears to be trying to tie Ukraine to the at‐ tack, something the Ukrain‐ ian government firmly de‐ nies.

WATCH | ISIS claims re‐ sponsibility for Moscowarea concert hall attack:

Russian authorities ar‐ rested four suspected attack‐ ers on Saturday, Putin said in an nighttime address to the nation, among 11 people de‐ tained on suspicion of in‐ volvement in the attack. He said that they were captured while fleeing to Ukraine.

Though no court hearing has been officially an‐ nounced, there was a heavy police presence around Moscow's Basmanny District Court on Sunday. Police tried to drive journalists away from the court.

Putin called the attack "a bloody, barbaric terrorist act" and said Russian authorities captured the four suspects as they were trying to escape to Ukraine through a "win‐ dow" prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the bor‐ der.

Russian media broadcast videos that apparently showed the detention and in‐ terrogation of the suspects, including one who told the cameras he was approached by an unidentified assistant to an Islamic preacher via a messaging app and paid to take part in the raid.

Kyiv strongly denied any involvement, and ISIS's Afghanistan affiliate, ISIS-K, claimed responsibility.

WATCH | ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past 2 years:

Putin didn't mention ISIS in his speech to the nation, and Kyiv accused him and other Russian politicians of falsely linking Ukraine to the assault to stoke fervor for Russia's fight in Ukraine, which recently entered its third year.

U.S. intelligence officials said they had confirmed the ISIS affiliate's claim.

"ISIS bears sole responsi‐ bility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involve‐ ment whatsoever," National Security Council spokes‐ woman Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

The U.S. shared informa‐ tion with Russia in early March about a planned ter‐ rorist attack in Moscow, and issued a public warning to Americans in Russia, Watson said.

The raid was a major em‐ barrassment for the Russian leader and happened just days after he cemented his grip on the country for an‐ other six years in a vote that followed the harshest crack‐ down on dissent since the Soviet times.

Some commentators on Russian social media ques‐ tioned how authorities, who have relentlessly suppressed any opposition activities and muzzled independent media, failed to prevent the attack despite the U.S. warnings.

White House press secre‐ tary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the U.S. condemned the attack and said that ISIS is a "common terrorist enemy that must be defeated everywhere."

ISIS, which fought against Russia during its intervention in the Syrian civil war, has long targeted Russia. In a statement posted by the group's Aamaq news agency, the ISIS Afghanistan affiliate said that it had attacked a large gathering of "Chris‐ tians" in Krasnogorsk.

The group issued a new statement Saturday on Aa‐ maq, saying the attack was carried out by four men who used automatic rifles, a pis‐ tol, knives and firebombs. It said the assailants fired at the crowd and used knives to kill some concertgoers, casting the raid as part of ISIS's ongoing war with coun‐ tries that it says are fighting against Islam.

In October 2015, a bomb planted by ISIS downed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 peo‐ ple on board, most of them Russian vacationers return‐ ing from Egypt.

The group, which oper‐ ates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, also has claimed re‐ sponsibility for several at‐ tacks in Russia's volatile Cau‐ casus and other regions in past years. It recruited fight‐ ers from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.