Russia mourns victims of deadly concert hall attack

By Guy Faulconbridge and Lydia Kelly

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia lowered its flags to half-mast on Sunday for a day of mourning after several people were killed with automatic weapons at a rock concert outside Moscow in the deadliest attack inside Russia in two decades.

President Vladimir Putin declared a national day of mourning after promising to find and punish all those behind the attack, which killed 133 people, including three children, and injured more than 150.

“I express my deep, sincere condolences to all those who lost their loved ones,” Putin said in an address to the nation on Saturday. This was his first public comment on the attack. “The entire country and our entire people are mourning with you.”

Islamic State claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack, but Putin has not publicly mentioned the terrorist group in connection with the attackers, who he said were trying to flee to Ukraine, insisting that ” Some people from the “Ukrainian side” had made preparations to provoke them across the border.

Ukraine has repeatedly denied any role in the attack, which Putin has also blamed on “international terrorism”.

People laid flowers at the Crocus City Hall, a 6,200-seat concert hall outside Moscow, where four armed men burst in on Friday just before Soviet-era rock group Picnic performed their hit “Afraid of Nothing.”

The men fired small bursts of automatic weapons at the frightened civilians, who fell screaming from the hail of bullets.

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

Long lines formed to donate blood in Moscow on Saturday.

In the southwestern city of Voronezh, people laid flowers and lit candles at a memorial to children who died in bombings in World War II, expressing solidarity with those killed in the attack near Moscow.

“We, like the entire country, are with you,” Voronezh region governor Alexander Gusev said on the Telegram messaging app.

Putin said 11 people had been detained, including four gunmen who fled the concert hall and fled to the Bryansk region, about 340 km (210 miles) southwest of Moscow.

“He tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for him 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.

Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, triggering a major European war in eastern Ukraine after an eight-year conflict between Ukrainian forces on one side and pro-Russian Ukrainians and Russian proxies on the other.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was typical of Putin and “other thugs” to want to shift blame.

In video footage 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, who had his hands bound and his hair held by his interrogator, a black shoe under his chin, said in poorly and highly accented Russian.

When asked why, he said: “For the money.” The man said he was promised half a million rubles (a little more than $5,000). One was shown answering questions through a Tajik translator.

Islamic State, the Islamist group that once controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack, the group’s Amaq agency said on Telegram.

Putin intervened in 2015 to turn the tide of the Syrian civil war by supporting President Bashar al-Assad against the opposition and Islamic State.

It was not clear why Islamic State chose this time to attack Russia.

The White House said the US government had shared information with Russia earlier this month about a planned attack in Moscow, and issued a public advisory to Americans in Russia on March 7. It was said that Islamic State has taken full responsibility for the attack.

US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, “Ukraine had no involvement whatsoever in this.”

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Reuters correspondents in Moscow; Writing by Lydia Kelly; Editing by William Mallard)

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