Eleven people have been arrested after several armed men broke into a concert hall in the city of Krasnogorsk, near Moscow, this Friday and opened fire on the crowd, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service reported this Saturday to the President Vladimir Putin, according to the Russian state news agency Tass.
Russia’s FSB security service has informed President Vladimir Putin that 11 people had been detained following Friday’s deadly attack near Moscow, including four people directly involved, Interfax reported, citing the Kremlin. Further work is being carried out to identify more accomplices, Interfax added.
The four alleged perpetrators of the attack were arrested early on Saturday when they were heading towards the Russian border with Ukraine, where they had contacts in the country, as reported by Interfax through the FSB security service.
Although Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Friday that Kyiv had nothing to do with Friday’s attack, Russian deputy Andrey Kartapolov has warned that if Ukraine is behind the attack there will be a “clear response” on the battlefield.
“Now we know in which country these damned bastards were planning to hide: Ukraine,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zajárova said on Telegram.
Russian lawmaker Alexander Khinshtein has reported that the attackers fled in a Renault vehicle that was spotted by police in the Bryansk region, about 340 kilometers southwest of Moscow on Friday night and disobeyed instructions to stop.
He added that two were arrested after a car chase and two others fled into the forest, and were later also detained, according to the Kremlin. Additionally, police found a pistol, a magazine for an assault rifle and passports from Tajikistan. Tajikistan is a predominantly Muslim Central Asian state that used to be part of the Soviet Union.
The perpetrators of the attack, who were armed and dressed in camouflage, opened fire with automatic weapons against the attendees, killing at least 143 people and wounding more than a hundred in an attack claimed by Islamic State militants.
Some died from gunshot wounds and others from the large arson that broke out in the auditorium. Reports have proven that the armed men were carrying backpacks with gasoline canisters.
