95 may be missing in Moscow attack
News service: Many who died aren’t yet identified
LONDON – As many as 95 people are still missing after last week's attack near Moscow when gunmen sprayed concertgoers with automatic weapons and set the venue on fire, a Russian news outlet reported on Wednesday.
The official toll from the attack on Crocus City Hall now stands at 140 dead and 182 wounded. But the Baza news service, which has good contacts in Russian security and law enforcement, said 95 more people appeared in lists compiled by the emergency services based on appeals from people about missing relatives.
“These lists include people with whom relatives have not been able to get in touch since the terrorist attack, but who are not on the lists of wounded and dead,” Baza said. “Some of these people died, but have not yet been identified.”
Russian investigators said the attack was carried out by four shooters using Kalashnikov automatic weapons. More than 500 rounds were found at the scene.
The shooting began shortly before the Soviet-era rock group Picnic was set to play to a full house of 6,200 people. More than 200 people could have been in the blazing building moments before the roof collapsed, Baza reported on Saturday, citing emergency service sources who reviewed surveillance footage.
Russian social media channels have been flooded in the days since the shooting with appeals to help find victims.
Gathering in a Telegram chat called “Crocus. Help Centre,” friends and relatives shared names of missing concertgoers and offered support.
“Was there anyone on the list named Igor Valentinovich Klimenchenko?” one user wrote on Saturday night. “Can someone send the list of victims?”
The name Klimenchenko was not on the list of confirmed dead published by Russia's emergencies ministry.
Another person wrote in the same chat that their uncle worked not far from Crocus and hadn't been in touch since the attack. “I'm very worried,” the nephew wrote on Saturday night.
Local media in the Bryansk region, southwestern Russia, reported on Wednesday that a woman was still searching for her son, Dmitry Bashlykov, a schoolteacher in Moscow who went to the Picnic concert with a friend who managed to escape.
Bashlykov's name was not on the emergencies ministry list.
Kyrgyzstan's foreign ministry has urged its citizens to put off unnecessary travel to Russia after the shooting, which was blamed on migrants from central Asia.
Last Friday's attack by camouflague-clad gunmen has fanned anti-immigrant sentiment in Russia, especially towards laborers from the predominantly Muslim countries of central Asia. Seven suspects originally from Tajikistan and one from Kyrgyzstan have been arrested and placed in pretrial detention.
The Islamic State has said it was responsible for the attack and has released video footage of the massacre. Russia, without providing evidence, has said it suspects a Ukrainian link in the attack, something Kyiv strongly denies.
Videos and photographs circulated online appear to show the suspected gunmen in detention being tortured. The Kremlin declined to comment on the matter, and many Russian politicians have praised the security officers involved in the detentions.
In an advisory issued this week, the Kyrgyz foreign ministry urged citizens to visit Russia only if necessary and, if they do, to make sure they have all the required documents on them at all times and comply with lawful orders of Russian police.
Authorities in neighboring Uzbekistan issued similar advice to any Uzbek citizens currently in Russia or planning to go there, local media reported.
Hundreds of thousands of central Asians work in Russia, and some have already said it has become tougher for them to do so. Some passengers, for example, refuse to board taxis with Tajik drivers.
Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty reported that many passengers trying to fly to Moscow on Monday from the capital of Turkmenistan, another central Asian state, were not allowed to board. It said they were told by immigration and law enforcement officials that this was connected to “the recent terrorist attack in Moscow.”