MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

At least 93 killed in terrorist attack during rock concert in Moscow

ISIS said it was behind the killing spree

At least 93 people were killed -including three children- and hundreds wounded in Moscow during a shooting spree undertaken by a group of gunmen against unarmed civilians at the 6,000-capacity Crocus City Hall concert hall which was also set on fire.

 ISIS eventually claimed authorship of the terrorist attack. In a statement posted by its Aamaq news agency, ISIS said it attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk, killing and wounding hundreds.

“Everything possible is being done to save people,” Moscow Governor Andrei Vorobyov noted while admitting that over 70 ambulance crews had been dispatched to the scene. In videos posted on Telegram by concert-goers, several dead bodies can be seen inside the Crocus City Hall shopping mall. Others portrayed gunmen shooting civilians at point-blank range.

Guards at the concert hall didn’t have guns, and some could have been killed at the start of the attack, it was also explained.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the international community expressed its condolences while the Federal Air Transport Agency announced that security was upped at Moscow's four main airports.

The attack took place just two weeks after the US Embassy warned of an “imminent” risk of terrorist attack against large concentrations of people in the Russian capital, recommending its citizens to avoid crowds. It was also one week after Russia's March 15-17 elections in which Vladimir Putin was reelected as president by a landslide. According to the Associated Press citing US intelligence sources, ISIS' branch in Afghanistan had planned the attack.

The theater's roof, where crowds had gathered for a performance by the Russian rock band Piknik, collapsed in the early hours of Saturday as firefighters tackled an ignition sparked during the attack.

In addition to the US Embassy's tip, the UK mission admitted it was monitoring the case closely. Other embassies, such as those of Germany, the Netherlands, and Latvia had urged their citizens to take extreme security measures.

Friday's was one of the deadliest criminal events in recent Russian history. Tass said four people directly involved in the attack were among the 11 suspects arrested in the aftermath. However, most of the assailants were reported to have fled before special forces and riot police arrived. In October 2015, a bomb planted by Islamic State downed a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacation-goers returning from Egypt. Russia’s top security agency said it thwarted an attack on March 7 against a Moscow synagogue by an ISIS cell, killing several of its members.

In October 2002, Chechen militants took about 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the building with 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters killed, most of them from the effects of the narcotic gas used by the Russian forces. In September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a school in Beslan in southern Russia, taking hundreds of hostages. The siege ended in a bloodbath two days later, and more than 330 people, about half of them children, were killed.