Kremlin says 40 killed and more than 100 wounded in attack on Moscow concert hall

[Pelican Press 0]

Kremlin says 40 ******* and more than 100 wounded in ******* on Moscow concert hall

Law enforcement officers stand guard near the Crocus City Hall concert venue following a reported ********* incident, near Moscow, Russia. Several gunmen in combat fatigues burst into a concert hall on March 22 and fired automatic weapons at the crowd, injuring an unspecified number of people.

Maksim Blinov / Sputnik via AP

Several gunmen burst into a large concert hall on the edge of Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with automatic gunfire, ******** at least 40 people, injuring more than 100 others and setting ***** to the venue in a brazen ******* just days after President Vladimir ****** 

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 on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.

It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the attackers, and there were no immediate claims of responsibility for the raid, which Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin described as a “huge tragedy” and which state authorities were investigating as terrorism. The *******, which left the concert hall in flames with a collapsed roof, was the deadliest ******* in Russia in years and came as the country’s 

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 dragged into a third year.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main domestic security and counter-terrorism agency, said 40 people were ******* and more than 100 were wounded in the ******* at Crocus City Hall, a large music hall on Moscow’s western edge.

The assailants threw explosives, triggering the massive blaze at the hall, which can accommodate 6,000, according to Russian news outlets. Video from outside showed the building on *****, with a huge cloud of smoke rising through the night sky. The street was lit up by the blinking blue lights of dozens of firetrucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles.

An injured woman is transported to an ambulance near the Crocus City Hall concert venue following a reported ********* incident, near Moscow, Russia. Several gunmen in combat fatigues burst into a concert hall on March 22 and fired automatic weapons at the crowd, injuring an unspecified number of people.

Maksim Blinov / Sputnik via AP   

The ******* took place as crowds gathered for a performance by the famous Russian rock band Picnic. Russian news reports said concertgoers were being evacuated, but that an unknown number could have been trapped by the blaze.

The prosecutor’s office said several men in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and fired on concertgoers.

Repeated volleys of gunfire could be heard in videos posted by Russian media and on Telegram channels. One showed two men with rifles moving through the venue. Another showed a man inside the auditorium and saying the assailants had set it on *****, as gunshots rang out incessantly in the background.

Other videos showed up to four attackers, armed with ******** rifles and wearing caps, who were ********* screaming people at point-blank range.

A view shows the burning Crocus City Hall concert hall following the ********* incident in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, on March 22, 2024. Gunmen opened ***** at a concert hall in a Moscow suburb on March 22, 2024 leaving ***** and wounded before a major ***** spread through the building, Moscow’s mayor and Russian news agencies reported. 

********* | AFP | Getty Images

Guards at the concert hall didn’t have guns, and some could have been ******* at the start of the *******, Russian media reported. It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the assailants, but some Russian news outlets suggested that they fled before special forces and riot police arrived.

Russian authorities said security has been tightened at Moscow’s airports, railway stations and the capital’s sprawling subway system. Moscow’s mayor canceled all mass gatherings and theaters and museums shut for the weekend. Other Russian regions also tightened security.

The Kremlin hasn’t blamed anyone for the *******, but some Russian lawmakers were quick to accuse Ukraine of being behind it. Hours before the *******, the Russian military l

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 on Ukraine’s power system, crippling the country’s biggest hydroelectric plant and other energy facilities and leaving more than a million people without electricity.

People are seen outside the burning Crocus City Hall concert hall following the ********* incident in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, on March 22, 2024. 

********* | AFP | Getty Images

Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukraine’s involvement in the concert hall *******.

“Ukraine has never resorted to the use of ********** methods,” he posted on X. “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield.”

John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Friday that he couldn’t yet speak about all the details but that “the images are just horrible. And just hard to watch.”

“Our thoughts are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible ********* *******,” Kirby said. “There are some moms and dads and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who haven’t gotten the news yet. This is going to be a tough day.”

Emergency services vehicles are seen outside the burning Crocus City Hall concert hall following the ********* incident in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, on March 22, 2024. 

********* | AFP | Getty Images

The ******* followed a statement issued earlier this month by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that urged the Americans to avoid crowded places in the Russian capital in view of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large gatherings in Moscow, a warning that was repeated by several other Western embassies.

Asked about the embassy’s notice issued on March 7, Kirby referred the question to the State Department, adding: “I don’t think that was related to this specific *******.”

Responding to a question about whether Washington had any prior information about the ********, Kirby responded: “I’m not aware of any advance knowledge that we had of this terrible *******.”

******, who extended his grip on Russia for another six years in the March 15-17 presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, earlier this week denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians.

A view shows the burning Crocus City Hall concert hall following the ********* incident in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, on March 22, 2024. 

********* | AFP | Getty Images

Russia was shaken by a series of deadly ******* attacks in the early 2000s during the fighting with separatists in the Russian province of Chechnya.

In October 2002, Chechen militants took about 800 people ******** at a Moscow theater. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the building and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters *****, most of them from effects of ********* gas Russian forces use to subdue the attackers.

And in September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a school in Beslan in southern Russia taking hundreds of hostages. The siege ended in a bloodbath two days later and more than 330 people, about half of them children, were *******.

A ***** rages inside the Crosus City Hall on March 22, 2024 in Krasnororsk, Russia. 

Contributor | Getty Images

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