Russians mourn concert hall attack victims
MOSCOW - Russia lowered flags to half-mast 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 on Friday evening, in which 137 people were killed, including three children, and 180 were injured.
Over 100 people remained in hospital, some of them in a serious condition. Putin lit a candle at a church at his residence outside Moscow on Sunday evening to honour those who died, his spokesman told the Interfax news agency.
“I express my deep, sincere condolences to all those who lost their loved ones,” Putin said in an address to the nation on Saturday. “The whole country and our entire people are grieving with you.”
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the 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 been prepared to spirit the gunmen across the border. Ukraine has denied any role in the attack.
People laid flowers at Crocus City Hall, the 6,200-seat concert hall outside Moscow where four armed men burst in 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 suspected gunmen, who fled the concert hall and made their way to the Bryansk region, about 340 km (210 miles) southwest of Moscow.