At least 12 people were killed and 35 injured in the shooting that took place this Friday in the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Moscow.
This was reported by several Russian media, including Novaya Gazeta and Moscow Times. The evacuation of the building is underway, state agency TASS reports.
Ria Novosti said men in camouflage clothing opened fire. This is shown in a video published by the Brief media on its Telegram channel.
Furthermore, as reported by the Russian channel RT, a heavy fire broke out in the complex where the concert hall is located and a roof is also said to have collapsed. There would be more than 100 people trapped in the Crocus municipality.
A large fire was reported in the complex where dozens of people died due to shooting.One of the witnesses’ versions is that an unknown person opened fire with a machine gun. And although there is no official information on the number of victims, the Telegram channel Baza writes that 12 people died.
“Camouflaged people, at least three, broke into the area of the Crocus municipality and opened fire with automatic weapons. There are certainly injured people,” RIA Novosti reported, citing its correspondent present on the scene. Other testimonies speak of “five bearded men armed with machine guns”. Some of them were carrying backpacks.
According to the same source, the musicians of the Picnic group, at whose concert the shooting occurred, were not injured.
For now it cannot be ruled out that it was a terrorist attack but the authorities prefer to be cautious. One fact that supports the hypothesis of a terrorist attack is that on March 7 the US embassy in Russia warned of possible attacks in Moscow within 48 hours in crowded places, including concert halls.
Similar messages were later published by the embassies and foreign ministries of other countries, including Britain, Germany and Canada.
Firefighters have not yet begun to put out the fire, awaiting the arrival of special forces, news agencies report.
The governor of the Moscow region Vorobyov went to the site of the attack. “An operational headquarters has been created. Full details will come later,” he said.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin then admitted the deaths of several people in the shooting that occurred this Friday during a rock concert in the city of Krasnogorsk, on the outskirts of the Russian capital.
“Today at (…) Crocus town hall a terrible tragedy occurred. My condolences to the families of the victims,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Russia’s special rapid reaction teams (SOBR) and special mobile units of the Moscow police (OMON) were alerted and sent to the Crocus municipality, where the armed attack took place.
The operational services reported this to TASS. “Sobr and Omon units from Moscow are heading to the scene,” they said.
Source: Clarin
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