Concertgoers Massacred In Moscow Terror Attack: 140 Killed, 200 Injured
Keneci Network @kenecifeed
Four heavily armed terrorists on Friday, stormed Crocus City Hall in the city of Krasnogorsk, where concertgoers were gathering to hear the Russian band Picnic. Videos circulating on social media show gunmen opening fire, shooting attendees at close range. The shooters set off smoke bombs and explosives, rocking the building and setting it on fire, according to Russian media.
The roof of the theater collapsed in the early hours of Saturday morning as firefighters spent hours trying to put out the flames. Over 137 people are dead and over 180 injured in the worst attack in Russia in 20 years. Russians laid flowers at memorials and lined up to give blood.
Russia's federal security agency, the FSB said the attack had been carefully planned. "The weapons that the terrorists used had been placed in a cache in advance," the FSB noted.
The Russia's Investigative Committee said that four suspects were stopped in the Bryansk region of western Russia, "not far from the border with Ukraine." They planned to cross the border into Ukraine and "had contacts" there, state news agency Tass said, citing Russia’s FSB.
A video online shows the moment one of the four terrorists cried and screamed as he was caught by Russian soldiers.
Russian border guards and FSB agents were seen furiously battering a man understood to be suspect Saidakrami Murodalii Rachabalizoda after chasing him through dense woodlands, in the 90-second-long clip shared to Telegram.
Armed Russian authorities can be seen running through snow and flowing water as they catch up with Rachabalizoda.
Moments later, an enraged soldier sliced off Rachabalizoda's ear with a knife and forced him to eat it in the video.
Rachabalizoda can be seen lying on his back in a fetal position after two armed men catch up to him as several dogs surround him.
Four terrorists who were identified as citizens of Tajikistan, appeared in court Friday. One of the terrorists was seen staking out the venue just a few days before the attack.
Rachabalizoda, Dalerdzhon Barotovich Mirzoyev, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Fayzov, face charges of a “terror attack committed by a group of individuals resulting in a person’s death,” according to the Tass news agency. All four pleaded guilty.
The court released a video showing police officers bringing one of the suspects into the courtroom in handcuffs, as well as photographs of the same man sitting in a glass cage for defendants. One of the suspects was led blindfolded into the courtroom. When his blindfold was removed, a black eye was visible. Another suspect was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair.
President Vladimir Putin addressed the shocked nation in a televised broadcast on Saturday, slamming the massacre as "a bloody, barbaric terrorist act." He declared Sun., March 24, a day of mourning.
Putin said that additional security measures have been put in place throughout the country following the attack -- the deadliest in over 20 years.
"All four direct perpetrators of the terrorist attack, all those who shot and killed people, were found and detained," Putin said. "They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them from the Ukrainian side to cross the state border."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied any Ukrainian involvement before ISIS claimed responsibility. "Ukraine certainly has nothing to do with the shooting/explosions in the Crocus City Hall (Moscow Region, Russia). It makes no sense whatsoever," he said on social media, adding, in part, "there is not the slightest doubt that the events in the Moscow suburbs will contribute to a sharp increase in military propaganda, accelerated militarization, expanded mobilization, and, ultimately, the scaling up of the war. And also to justify manifest genocidal strikes against the civilian population of Ukraine."
However Russian officials continue to accuse Ukraine and the west of involvement in the attack.
"We believe the action was prepared both by the radical Islamists themselves and, obviously, facilitated by Western special services," Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Gen. Alexander Bortnikov told reporters Tuesday in a briefing about the Crocus City Hall attack. "Ukraine's special services themselves have a direct connection to this."
"The terrorist attack in Crocus was needed by Western intelligence services and Ukraine in order to shake up the situation and create panic in society in Russia," he added.
Intelligence and political observers citing Russian reports, suggest that some western and Israeli officials may have also wanted a distraction from the Israel-Gaza war which has recently led to cracks in the right-wing support base for the Jewish state, in America and Europe.
Conservatives have been among the most consistent supporters of Israel in the west. But for the first, many have criticized the Israeli Defense Forces' scorched earth tactics in its execution of the ongoing war in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Many have also pointed to past reports that Israel's intelligence agency Mossad had infiltrated ISIS, as a possible reason to believe the Jewish state may be involved in the Moscow attack. "They want Americans to refocus on 'Islamic terrorism' while they kill Palestinians," one intelligence expert wrote on X.
Former Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon had in 2017, claimed that the Islamic terrorist group in the Syrian Golan Heights “apologized” for attacking an Israeli unit in November 2016.
“There was one case recently where Daesh opened fire and apologized,” Ya’alon said. This was an apparent reference to a clash that took place near the Syrian border last November, in which IDF troops exchanged fire with members of the Islamic State affiliate. After a brief gun battle, the Israeli military attacked the terrorist group with airstrikes and tank fire, killing four of them.
WATCH terrorists attack concertgoers in Moscow