Did concert hall lock emergency exits before terrorists attacked?
EMERGENCY exits at the Moscow concert hall where gunmen killed 137 people could not be opened, some of the survivors have claimed.
Russian media reported that more people may have died from smoke inhalation than gunshot wounds during the attack on Friday. Some 28 bodies are thought to have been found in a lavatory and another 14 in the stairwell of an emergency exit. Trapped people hiding from the gunmen reportedly called emergency services pleading to be rescued as thick smoke filled the building.
A video shot by a survivor on his mobile phone showed people desperately rattling the handles of closed emergency exits as they tried to flee.
“This is a locked door,” one survivor is heard saying. Baza, a Telegram channel linked to Russian security services, said bodies piled up next to emergency exits which may have been blocked.
In an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, an unnamed survivor said: “We tried the fire escape ladder, but it was closed. People climbed the ladder, descended the ladder, all closed.”.
The issue of blocked or locked fire exits is sensitive in Russia. In 2018, more than 60 people died in a shopping centre fire in Siberia because alarms had been turned off and escape exits locked.
Aras Agalarov, the owner of Crocus City Hall, denied any emergency exits were locked. Several survivors said that they escaped through emergency exits.
Some families still don’t know whether relatives who went to the event attacked by gunmen on Friday are alive.
Moscow’s department of health said yesterday that it has begun identifying the bodies of those killed via DNA testing, which will take at least two weeks.