India on Saturday reached out to Russia after the terror attack on Friday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemning the incident and said “India stands in solidarity with the Government and the people of the Russian Federation in this hour of grief”.
“We strongly condemn the heinous terrorist attack in Moscow. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims,” Modi said in a post on X. “India stands in solidarity with the Government and the people of the Russian Federation in this hour of grief,” he said.
The death toll in the Moscow concert hall attack has risen to 133, Russia’s top state investigative agency said on Saturday. The update from the Investigative Committee comes as authorities are combing the charred wreckage of the Crocus City Hall on Moscow’s western edge for more victims. Officials previously put the death toll from Friday’s raid at 115.
The attack also left many wounded. The Islamic State group’s Afghanistan branch claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on affiliated channels on social media. A US intelligence official told The Associated Press that US agencies had confirmed that the group was responsible for the attack.
In an address to the nation on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said authorities had detained 11 people, including four who took part in the attack. He also suggested they had been trying to cross the border into Ukraine which, he said, tried to create a “window” to help them escape.
Ukraine has strongly denied any involvement and accused Moscow of using the attack to try to stoke fervour in its war effort. In an address to the nation, Putin called it “a bloody, barbaric terrorist act” and said all four people who were directly involved had been taken into custody.
The attack, which was the deadliest in Russia in years, came just days after Putin cemented his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide and as the country’s war in Ukraine dragged into a third year.
Shortly after the attack, some Russian lawmakers pointed the finger at Ukraine. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied any involvement.
“Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield.”
Images shared by Russian state media on Saturday showed a fleet of emergency vehicles still gathered outside the ruins of Crocus City Hall, which had a capacity of more than 6,000 people in Krasnogorsk, on Moscow’s western edge.
Videos posted online showed gunmen in the venue shooting civilians at point-blank range. The roof of the theatre, where crowds had gathered on Friday for a performance by the Russian rock band Picnic, collapsed in the early hours of Saturday morning as firefighters spent hours fighting a fire that erupted during the attack.
Messages of outrage, shock and support for those affected have since streamed in from around the world.
On Friday, the UN Security Council condemned “the heinous and cowardly terrorist attack” and underlined the need for the perpetrators to be held accountable. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also condemned the terrorist attack “in the strongest possible terms”, his spokesman said.
Meanwhile, in Moscow itself, hundreds of people stood in line on Saturday morning to donate blood and plasma, Russia’s Health Ministry said.
In October 2015, a bomb planted by the Islamic State downed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacation-goers returning from Egypt. The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, also has claimed several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in the past years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
