Guards on the live performance corridor didn’t have weapons, and a few might have been killed initially of the assault, Russian media reported. It wasn’t instantly clear what occurred to the assailants, however some Russian information shops recommended that they fled earlier than particular forces and riot police arrived.
Because the blaze continued to rage late into the night time, statements of concern, shock and help to these affected streamed in from world wide.
Russian authorities mentioned safety has been tightened at Moscow’s airports, railway stations and the capital’s sprawling subway system. Moscow’s mayor cancelled all mass gatherings and theatres and museums shut for the weekend. Different Russian areas additionally tightened safety.
The Kremlin didn’t instantly blame anybody for the assault, however some Russian lawmakers had been fast to accuse Ukraine of being behind it. Hours earlier than the assault, the Russian navy launched a sweeping barrage on Ukraine’s energy system, crippling the nation’s largest hydroelectric plant and different power amenities and leaving greater than one million individuals with out electrical energy.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, denied Ukraine’s involvement within the live performance corridor assault.
Loading
“Ukraine has by no means resorted to using terrorist strategies,” he posted on X. “Every thing on this conflict will probably be determined solely on the battlefield.”
John Kirby, spokesman for the White Home Nationwide Safety Council, mentioned that he couldn’t but discuss all the small print however that “the pictures are simply horrible. And simply laborious to look at.”
“Our ideas are going to be with the victims of this horrible, horrible capturing assault,” Kirby mentioned. “There are some mothers and dads and brothers and sisters and little children who haven’t gotten the information but. That is going to be a tricky day.”
The assault adopted a press release issued earlier this month by the US Embassy in Moscow that urged the People to keep away from crowded locations within the Russian capital in view of “imminent” plans by extremists to focus on massive gatherings in Moscow, together with concert events. The warning was repeated by a number of different Western embassies.
Loading
Requested in regards to the embassy’s discover issued on March 7, Kirby referred the query to the State Division, including: “I don’t suppose that was associated to this particular assault.”
Responding to a query about whether or not Washington had any prior details about the assault, Kirby responded: “I’m not conscious of any advance information that we had of this horrible assault.”
Putin, who prolonged his grip on Russia for an additional six years within the March 15-17 presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, earlier this week denounced the Western warnings as an try to intimidate Russians.
Russia was shaken by a collection of lethal terror assaults within the early 2000s throughout the combating with separatists within the Russian province of Chechnya.
In October 2002, Chechen militants took about 800 individuals hostage at a Moscow theatre. Two days later, Russian particular forces stormed the constructing and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters died, most of them from the consequences of narcotic fuel Russian forces used to subdue the attackers.
And in September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a college in Beslan in southern Russia taking tons of of hostages. The siege led to a massacre two days later and greater than 330 individuals, about half of them youngsters, had been killed.
AP