As Russia mourns concert hall attack, some families are still wondering if their members are alive

Special operations forces servicemen walk towards the Crocus City Hall concert hall following the shooting incident in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, on March 22, 2024. Pic/AFP

Family and friends of those still missing after an attack that killed over 130 people at a suburban Moscow concert hall waited for news of their loved ones as Russia observed a day of national mourning on Sunday.

Events at cultural institutions were cancelled, flags were lowered, and TV entertainment and ads were suspended, according to state news agency RIA Novosti. A steady stream of people brought flowers to a makeshift memorial near the burnt-out concert hall.

The attack, which has been claimed by an affiliate of the Islamic State, is the deadliest on Russian soil in years. As rescuers continue to search the damaged building, some families still don't know if members who went to the event targeted by gunmen on Friday are alive.

Igor Pogadaev was desperately seeking any details of his wife's whereabouts after she went to the concert and stopped responding to his messages. He hasn't seen a message from Yana Pogadaeva since she sent her husband two photos from the Crocus City Hall music venue.

After Igor saw the reports of gunmen opening fire on concertgoers, he rushed to the site but couldn't find her in the numerous ambulances or among the hundreds of people who had made their way out of the venue. "I went around, searched, I asked everyone, I showed photographs. No one saw anything, no one could say anything," Pogadaev told The Associated Press in a video message.

He watched flames bursting out of the building as he made frantic calls to a hotline for relatives of the victims but received no information. As the death toll mounted on Saturday, Igor scoured hospitals in Moscow and the Moscow region, looking for information on newly admitted patients.

But his wife wasn't among the 154 reported injured, nor on the list of 50 victims authorities have already identified, he said. Refusing to believe that his wife could be one of the 133 people who died in the attack, Pogadaev still hasn't gone home. "I couldn't be alone anymore, it's very difficult, so I drove to my friend's," he said. "Now at least I'll be with someone."

The Moscow Region's Emergency Situations Ministry posted a video Sunday showing equipment dismantling the damaged music venue to give rescuers access. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be trying to tie Ukraine to the attack, something its government firmly denies.

Russian authorities arrested four suspected attackers on Saturday, Putin said in an nighttime address to the nation, among 11 people suspected of involvement in the attack. He claimed they were captured while fleeing to Ukraine.

Though no court hearing has been officially announced, there was a heavy police presence around Moscow's Basmanny District Court on Sunday. Police tried to drive journalists away from the court.

Putin called the attack 'a bloody, barbaric terrorist act' and said Russian authorities captured the four suspects as they were trying to escape to Ukraine through a 'window' prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border.

Russian media broadcast videos that apparently showed the detention and interrogation of the suspects, including one who told the cameras he was approached by an unidentified assistant to an Islamic preacher via a messaging app and paid to take part in the raid.

Kyiv strongly denied any involvement, and the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate claimed responsibility. Putin did not mention IS in his speech to the nation, and Kyiv accused him and other Russian politicians of falsely linking Ukraine to the assault to stoke fervour for Russia's fight in Ukraine, which recently entered its third year.

US intelligence officials said they had confirmed the IS affiliate's claim. "ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever," National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

The US shared information with Russia in early March about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow and issued a public warning to Americans in Russia, Watson said. The raid was a major embarrassment for the Russian leader and happened just days after he cemented his grip on the country for another six years in a vote that followed the harshest crackdown on dissent since the Soviet times.

Some commentators on Russian social media questioned how authorities, who have relentlessly suppressed any opposition activities and muzzled independent media, failed to prevent the attack despite the US warnings.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the US condemned the attack and noted that the Islamic State group is a 'common terrorist enemy that must be defeated everywhere'.

IS, which fought against Russia during its intervention in the Syrian civil war, has long targeted Russia. In a statement posted by the group's Aamaq news agency, IS's Afghanistan affiliate said it had attacked a large gathering of 'Christians' in Krasnogorsk.

The group issued a new statement Saturday on Aamaq saying the attack was carried out by four men who used automatic rifles, a pistol, knives and firebombs. It said the assailants fired at the crowd and used knives to kill some concertgoers, casting the raid as part of IS's ongoing war with countries that it says are fighting against Islam.

In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS 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.

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