At the very least 60 folks have been killed and dozens a lot more hurt right after gunmen opened fire and established off explosives at a concert hall on the western edge of Moscow.

Here’s what we know so far:

Crocus City Corridor

The Russian funds is a sprawling city that is residence to some 21 million men and women.

The Crocus Town Hall, which includes a purchasing centre and meeting venue, lies in suburban Krasnogorsk, about 20km (12 miles) west of the Kremlin and alongside the Moscow ring road.

Opened in 2009, the live performance corridor is a popular enjoyment venue with a ability for 6,200 men and women.

Former United States President Donald Trump when held a Overlook Universe contest there.

The attack

The attack started on Friday evening just as persons have been using their seats for a bought-out exhibit by Picnic, a preferred rock band from the Soviet period.

As a lot of as 5 males in beat fatigues entered the concert corridor and opened hearth on those people within.

Dave Primov, who was in the corridor through the attack, described chaotic scenes.

“There ended up volleys of gunfire,” Primov informed The Linked Press news company. “We all acquired up and tried out to shift towards the aisles. Persons began to panic, started out to run and collided with each other. Some fell down and other people trampled on them.”

Russian investigators mentioned a lot more than 60 people today experienced been killed, though 145 a lot more had been wounded in just one of the worst assaults to hit the state in decades.

The attackers also established off explosives that ignited a huge blaze that at just one place covered as significantly as 12,900 square metres (139,000sq ft), according to Russian news company Interfax.

Helicopters ended up brought in to douse the flames from the air, as firefighters battled the blaze from the floor. The fireplace was at some point brought less than handle early on Saturday.

The Emergency Predicaments Ministry claimed firefighters served about 100 persons escape via the building’s basement, although rescue functions were being also released for people today trapped on the roof.

TASS news company said the associates of Picnic had been not harmed and were evacuated securely.

The hunt for the attackers

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the top state felony investigation agency, opened a “terrorist” investigation into the assault and the national guard, Rosgvardia, was between models deployed to search for the gunmen.

Graphic video clips posted on social media confirmed the gunmen firing repeated rounds as they entered the setting up, taking pictures screaming people today at place-blank range.

An additional video showed a man in the auditorium stating the attackers experienced established it on fireplace.

The Kremlin did not straight away blame any person for the attack, but some Russian lawmakers had been fast to accuse Ukraine.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukraine’s involvement.

“Ukraine has under no circumstances resorted to the use of terrorist approaches,” he posted on X. “Everything in this war will be determined only on the battlefield.”

ISIL promises duty

Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), an Afghan affiliate of ISIL (ISIS), claimed duty for the attack in a assertion posted by its Amaq news company.

It claimed its fighters experienced attacked on the outskirts of Moscow, “killing and wounding hundreds and causing great destruction to the area in advance of they withdrew to their bases safely” and then escaped. It gave no more element.

Russia has reported many incidents involving ISIL this thirty day period, with the FSB intelligence agency stating on March 7 it foiled an attack by ISKP on a Moscow synagogue.

The US had also warned of the heightened threat posed by “extremists” with imminent plans for an assault on “large gatherings” in Moscow, and experienced shared that discovering with the Russians. On Friday night, a US official mentioned Washington had intelligence confirming ISIL’s claim of accountability for the Crocus Metropolis Corridor attack.

Experts reported the team experienced opposed Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent yrs.

“ISIS-K [ISKP] has been fixated on Russia for the earlier two years, routinely criticising Putin in its propaganda,” stated Colin Clarke of Soufan Heart, a Washington-dependent investigation group.

Michael Kugelman of the Washington, DC-dependent Wilson Center mentioned that ISKP “sees Russia as getting complicit in actions that consistently oppress Muslims”.

What previous assaults have focused Russia?

In October 2015, an ISIL-planted bomb exploded on a Russian passenger airplane about Sinai, killing all 224 persons on board, most of them Russians returning from their vacations in Egypt.

The country was also shaken by a series of deadly assaults in the early 2000s.

In September 2004, about 30 Chechen fighters seized a college in Beslan in southern Russia getting hundreds of men and women hostage. The siege finished in a massacre two times afterwards and additional than 330 folks, about fifty percent of them children, were being killed.

In October 2002, Chechen fighters stormed a theatre in Moscow having about 800 people hostage in the auditorium. Russian particular forces launched a bid to rescue the captives two days later on, by very first subduing the attackers with a narcotic gasoline. Some 41 Chechens died, as effectively as 129 hostages, generally from the results of the gasoline.