Russia charges two suspects with terror attack at music venue

Some survivors say emergency exits were locked during ordeal

Russia has swiftly charged two suspects after gunmen killed more than 130 people at a concert outside Moscow in the deadliest attack inside Russia for two decades.

PresidentVladimirPutindeclareda national day of mourning after pledging to punish all those behind the attack on Friday evening, in which 137 people were killed, including three children, and 182 were injured.

More than 100 people remain in hospital, some of them in a serious condition. Video footage showed a sombre-looking Putin lighting a candle at a church at his residence outside Moscow yesterday evening to honour those who died.

Some survivors claimed emergency exits at Crocus City Hall, the 6,200seat concert venue, were locked and that this prevented escape.

Russian media have reported that more people may have died from smoke inhalation than gunshot wounds during the attack on Friday.

Twenty-eight bodies are thought to have been found in a toilet 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,” the survivor is heard telling his companion.

In what appears to be a wellplanned attack, the gunmen set fire to the building. Baza, a Telegram channel linked to the Russian security services, said that bodies piled up next to emergency exits that may have been blocked shut.

In an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, an unnamed survivor said that he had been forced to dash through the main entrance of the concert hall, where the gunmen had started their attack, because the fire exits would not open.

“We tried the fire escape ladder, but it was closed. People climbed the ladder, descended the ladder, all closed,” he said.

The issue of blocked or locked fire exits is sensitive in Russia. In 2018, more than 60 people died in a shopping mall fire in Siberia because the alarms had been turned off and the escape exits had been locked.

The attack, responsibility for which has been claimed by an affiliate of the Islamic State group, is the deadliest on Russian soil in years.

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.

The Moscow region’s ministry of emergency situations posted a video yesterday showing workers dismantling the damaged music venue to give rescuers access.

Earlier yesterday, people laid flowers at Crocus City Hall, days after 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 civilians who fell screaming.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Putin, who has yet to name those he thinks are responsible, has not publicly mentioned the Islamist militant group in connection with the attackers, who he said had been trying to escape to Ukraine. He said that some on “the Ukrainian side” had been prepared to spirit the gunmen across the border.

Ukraine has denied any role in the attack.

Moscow’s Basmanny district court has charged two suspects with acts of terrorism in connection with the attack, naming them as Dalerdzhon Barotovich Mirzoyev and Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizoda, according to Moscow courts’ official Telegram channel.

It said Mr Mirzoyev, a Tajik national, pleaded guilty to all charges and the court remanded him in pre-trial custody until May 22.

Friday’s attack was the deadliest on Russian territory since the 2004 Beslan school siege, when Islamist militants took hostage more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children.

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 340km south-west 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 (FSB) said the gunmen had contacts in Ukraine and were captured near the border.

Blindfolded and with their hands cuffed behind their backs, the suspects were taken to the Moscow headquarters of the Investigative Committee yesterday.

Islamic State, the Islamist group that once sought control over swathes of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack in a Telegram statement from the group’s Amaq agency. On Saturday night, Islamic State released on its Telegram channels what it said was footage of the attack.

In video published by Russian media and Telegram channels with close ties to the Kremlin, one of the suspects said he was offered money to carry out the attack.

“I shot people,” the suspect, his hands tied and his hair held by an interrogator, a black boot beneath his chin, said in poor and heavily accented Russian.

When asked why, he said: “For money.” The man said he had been promised half a million roubles (almost €5,000). One was shown answering questions through a Tajik translator.

Unverified footage posted to Russian Telegram channels appeared to show one of the suspects being tortured with electric shocks in detention.

‘The men fired their automatic weapons in short bursts at civilians who fell down screaming’