The search and clearance work could last several more days
The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations has raised the number of people injured in Friday’s attack on the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Moscow to 152, according to its latest report collected this morning by the TASS agency.
The death toll as a result of the terrorist attack remains at 133 people, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee, warning that search operations were still underway and that the figure could rise during the clearing of the rubble.
Of the injured, according to the latest update on Saturday, 105 remained hospitalized while another 32 people were receiving outpatient care. Likewise, at least 40 people had to undergo emergency surgery on the night of Friday to Sunday.
The investigating agency explained in a previous statement released via Telegram that the majority of the deaths had been the result of either gunshot wounds or asphyxiation during the fire in the room.
Friday’s attack in Moscow has already become the worst terrorist attack in contemporary Russia above the crisis of the kidnapping, by Chechen separatists, of the audience of the Dubrovka theater in 2002, a tragedy that left 132 hostages. died after an unmitigated intervention by the Russian security forces.
The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, appeared this Saturday for the first time after the attack to confirm the arrest of the four perpetrators of the massacre, which he described as a “terrorist, bloody and barbaric act” before declaring this Sunday, the 24th March, day of national mourning.
Although the jihadist organization Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, the president has not mentioned the group in his speech. Instead, he has limited himself to indicating, as previously informed by the Federal Security Service, that the suspects of material responsibility for the massacre were detained when they were heading to the Ukrainian border where, according to the president, “they had prepared an entry on the Ukrainian side to cross”.
The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, rejected such accusations this Saturday, denying any link between kyiv and the attack and regretted not only that Putin does not care about his own country but also that he always “places the blame on others.”
For his part, one of the detainees allegedly involved in the attack has confessed that they were promised “half a million rubles” (about 5,000 euros) for this act. An amount of which they received half through a transfer to a bank card, as explained by the alleged suspect in a recording of the interrogation published by Channel One of Russian television.
