Russia’s security services say they have arrested four gunmen responsible for the shooting that killed at least 115 people at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, in one of the worst terror attacks in the country’s history.
The director of Russia’s federal security service (FSB) informed Vladimir Putin that 11 individuals had been arrested in connection with Friday’s terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow, including four suspects involved in the shooting.
Islamic State, through an affiliated news agency, claimed responsibility for the attack late on Friday in a post on Telegram, in which they claimed the gunmen had managed to escape afterwards. A US official said Washington had intelligence confirming Islamic State’s claim.
Russian officials have described the attack as an act of terrorism.
There are already signs that Moscow will try to pin blame for the attack on Ukraine, despite the claim of responsibility by Islamic State.
Without providing any evidence, the FSB on Saturday appeared to point the finger at Kyiv, saying that the gunmen were arrested while trying to cross into Ukraine.
“They had contacts on the Ukrainian side,” the FSB said in a statement.
Some Russian officials speculated that Ukraine, the country against which Russia launched a full-scale invasion two years ago, was responsible.
Kyiv has vehemently denied it had any involvement in the attack.
“Ukraine certainly has nothing to do with the shooting/explosions in the Crocus City Hall,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential administration, wrote on X.
“It makes no sense whatsoever. Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods.”
Meanwhile, the death toll from the attack had risen to 115 by Saturday afternoon, according to a statement from Russia’s investigative committee.
Russian authorities said at least 145 people had been injured, with 16 people in a “critical state”.
“The number of victims of the terrorist attack will grow significantly,” said Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the region.
Photos on Friday evening showed Crocus City Hall engulfed in flames as graphic videos appeared to show several people being killed by the unidentified gunmen. In one clip, three men in fatigues carrying rifles fired at point-blank range into bodies strewn about the lobby of the concert hall. Other video footage showed people screaming, crawling on their hands and knees out of the music venue or fleeing down stairwells.
The attack came minutes before a veteran Russian rock band was to start playing in front of a sold-out audience.
Witness accounts describe scenes of chaos and confusion, with many concertgoers initially assuming the sound of gunshots was part of the show.
“We were sitting in the back rows, waiting for the show to start. At one point I noticed loud pops, like fireworks, thinking it was part of the concert,” one witness told the Meduza outlet.
The Russian investigative committee said those killed in the concert hall died of gunshot wounds and “poisoning” related to the fire.
The committee added that the attackers had used “a flammable liquid to set fire to the premises of the concert hall”.
Baza, a telegram channel close to Russia’s security services, said more than 10 bodies of the victims had been found in one of the toilets of the Crocus City Hall.
According to the channel, the victims were hiding from the shooting but later died because of the smoke.
Putin has not appeared or commented in public so far after the assault. The Kremlin said the Russian leader wished all those injured in the terrorist attack a “speedy recovery”.
The international community condemned the incident, with the UN Security Council calling it a “heinous and cowardly terrorist attack”.
The British foreign secretary, David Cameron, said the UK “condemns the deadly attack in the the strongest possible terms”.
The Crocus City Hall shooting was the deadliest attack in Russia since the 2004 Beslan school siege, in which 334 people, including 186 children, were killed after being held captive by militants for two days.
Questions will be raised as to why Putin appeared to have rejected a terror warning weeks before the attack.
The attack on Friday came two weeks after western countries led by the US had issued terror warnings and told their citizens not to join public gatherings in Russia.
The group that claimed credit for the deadly terrorist attack was an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan called Islamic State Khorasan Province, or Isis-K.
According to US officials, Washington had collected intelligence in March that Isis-K had been planning an attack on Moscow, according to officials.
Putin had called the March warnings from western embassies a “provocation”.
But citing a source in Russia’s security services, the state agency Tass on Saturday admitted that Russian security services did indeed receive information from the US over a potential terrorist attack.
The FSB previously said it had foiled an attack on a Moscow synagogue by Isis-K, a group that seeks to create caliphate across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iran.
Putin changed the course of the Syrian civil war by intervening in 2015, supporting President Bashar al-Assad against the opposition and Islamic State.
Russian authorities had also recently carried out a series of raids against armed Islamist militants in the region of Ingushetia, leading to firefights between police and the fighters.