Russia mourns victims of deadly concert hall attack
MOSCOW – Russia lowered flags to half-staff on Sunday for a day of mourning after scores of people were gunned down with automatic weapons at a rock concert outside Moscow in the deadliest attack inside Russia for two decades.
President Vladimir Putin declared a national day of mourning after pledging to track down and punish all those behind the attack, in which 137 people were killed, including three children, and more than 150 injured.
“I express my deep, sincere condolences to all those who lost their loved ones,” Putin said in an address to the nation on Saturday, his first public comments on the attack. “The whole country and our entire people are grieving with you.”
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack, but Putin has not publicly mentioned the Islamist militant group in connection with the attackers, who he said had been trying to escape to Ukraine. He asserted that some on “the Ukrainian side” had prepared to spirit them across the border.
Ukraine has repeatedly denied any role in the attack, which Putin also blamed on “international terrorism.”
People laid flowers at Crocus City Hall, the 6,200-seat concert hall outside Moscow where four armed men burst in on Friday just before Soviet-era rock group Picnic was to perform its hit “Afraid of Nothing.”
The men fired their automatic weapons in short bursts at terrified civilians who fell screaming in a hail of bullets.
It was the deadliest attack on Russian territory since the 2004 Beslan school siege, when Islamist militants took more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children, hostage.
Long lines formed in Moscow to donate blood. Blood banks said on Sunday they now had enough blood supplies for four to six months.
Across Moscow, billboards carried a picture of a single candle, the date of the attack and the words “We mourn.” In other cities, people laid flowers.
Countries around the world have expressed horror at the attack and sent their condolences to the Russian people.
Putin said 11 people had been detained, including the four gunmen, who fled the concert hall and made their way to the Bryansk region, about 210 miles southwest of Moscow.
“They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” Putin said.
Russia’s Federal Security Service said the gunmen had contacts in Ukraine and were captured near the border. The suspects have been brought to Moscow and may appear in court later in the day, according to local news agencies.
Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, triggering a major European war after eight years of conflict in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces on one side and proRussian Ukrainians and Russian proxies on the other.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was typical of Putin and “other thugs” to seek to divert blame.
The Islamic State, the Islamist group that once sought control over swaths of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack, the group’s Amaq agency said on Telegram.