Russians lay flowers and light candles outside Crocus concert hall on day of mourning. This live blog is closed
Pope Francis has condemned the shooting attack at the concert hall near Moscow as a “vile” act that offends God.
“I assure my prayers for the victims of the vile terrorist attack carried out in Moscow, may the Lord receive them in his peace, comfort their families and convert the hearts of those who … carry out these inhuman actions that offend God,” the pope said in St. Peter’s Square after the Palm Sunday mass.
The UK’s chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has said the UK had “very little confidence” in Russia’s statements on the Moscow concert hall attack, accusing it of creating a “smokescreen of propaganda” to defend its assault on Ukraine.
At least 133 people were killed by armed gunmen at the Crocus City Hall in a suburb on the northern edge of Moscow on Friday, with the Islamic State (IS) group claiming responsibility for the attack.
Russian authorities have not yet blamed the group, but Vladimir Putin has said the attackers were apprehended while “travelling towards Ukraine where, according to preliminary information, they had a window to cross the border”.
Russia’s FSB Security Service said earlier that the assailants had been “in contact” with people in Ukraine as they tried to flee the country. Kyiv has denied any involvement in the attack.
Hunt told Sky News on Sunday:
I think we have very little confidence in anything the Russian government says.
We know that they are creating a smokescreen of propaganda to defend an utterly evil invasion of Ukraine.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s not a tragedy when innocent people lose their lives, when you have horrible bombings.
But I take what the Russian government says with an enormous pinch of salt, I am afraid, after what we have seen from them over the last few years.
Hunt went on to warn that the UK and other European countries should “absolutely” be concerned about the re-emergence of IS on the world stage.
“We are very lucky in this country that we have incredibly impressive intelligence agencies who have been successful … in foiling a lot of terrorist threats over recent years, but we have to remain vigilant,” he told Sky News.
“If it is Islamic State, they’re utterly indiscriminate in what they do, they’re prepared to murder in the most horrific way.”
A makeshift memorial has been set up outside the Crocus concert hall where people have been lighting candles, laying flowers and paying their respects to the victims of the shooting that has claimed the lives of at least 133 people.
The Associated Press has spoken to Igor Pogadaev, who is desperately seeking any details of his wife’s whereabouts after she went to the Crocus City Hall concert on Friday and hasn’t been heard from since.
Pogadaev said he hasn’t seen a message from Yana Pogadaeva since she sent her husband two photos from the Crocus City Hall music venue just outside Moscow.
After Igor saw the reports of gunmen opening fire on concertgoers, he rushed to the site but couldn’t find her.
“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 any more, it’s very difficult, so I drove to my friend’s,” he said. “Now at least I’ll be with someone.”
Serhiy Lysak, the Dnipropetrovsk region governor, said heating networks and power lines were damaged by falling debris after a Russian drone attack in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
He wrote on Telegram that six hospitals, over 150 schools and 3,000 houses remained without heat due to a “voltage drop” in the city, which left several boiler plants disconnected.
Lysak also said that Russia targeted the Nikopol region, where thousands of people were left without electricity after the debris of a downed drone damaged an energy facility. Electricity has since been restored. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Overall, Russia launched 57 missiles and drones on Ukraine in the early hours of Sunday morning, including attacking Kyiv and the western region of Lviv that is near the Polish border, according to Reuters.
Poland’s foreign ministry has said Warsaw will demand explanations from Russia in connection with “another violation of the country’s airspace” as it called on Moscow to “stop terrorist air attacks on the inhabitants and territory of Ukraine”.
Polska będzie się domagać wyjaśnień od Rosji w związku z kolejnym naruszeniem przestrzeni powietrznej kraju.
— Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych RP 🇵🇱 (@MSZ_RP) March 24, 2024
Przede wszystkim zaś wzywamy Federację Rosyjską do zaprzestania terrorystycznych ataków z powietrza na mieszkańców i terytorium Ukrainy.https://t.co/Gu1DRxVn2u
Poland’s armed forces said earlier that one of Russia’s cruise missiles briefly violated Polish airspace. This is not the first such reported violation.
According to the general staff of the Polish armed forces, a Russian missile entered the airspace of the Nato member at the end of December.
In April 2023, a military object was found in a forest close to the village of Zamość near the northern city of Bydgoszcz. It was later reported to be a Russian missile.
In November 2022, a stray Ukrainian missile struck the Polish village of Przewodów in the south, killing two people and raising fears at the time of the war in Ukraine spilling over the border.
The Ukrainian military on Sunday said that it struck two large Russian landing ships and a communications centre used by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet during overnight strikes on the annexed Crimean peninsula, Reuters reports.
“The defence forces of Ukraine successfully hit the Azov and Yamal large landing ships, a communications centre and also several infrastructure facilities of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in temporarily occupied Crimea,” Ukraine’s military said.
A Russian-installed official reported a major Ukrainian attack overnight and said that air defences had shot down more than 10 missiles over the Crimean port of Sevastopol. These claims are yet to be independently verified by the Guardian.
Ukraine has claimed to have destroyed around a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since the start of the war, usually in attacks at night using sea-based drones packed with explosives.
Russia and Ukraine have increased their air attacks in recent weeks.
On Saturday, Russia said that it had repulsed a barrage of Ukrainian missiles fired at the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Sevastopol’s governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said rocket fragments had killed a 65-year-old resident and four other people had been injured. “It was the biggest attack in recent times.”
Russia will observe a national day of mourning on Sunday after a massacre in a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 130 people, the deadliest attack in Europe to have been claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
Flags are flying at half mast, numerous events have been cancelled and TV channels have updated their schedules.
Agence France-Presse reports that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has vowed to track down and punish those behind the “barbaric terrorist attack”, saying four gunmen trying to flee to Ukraine had been arrested. Kyiv has strongly denied any connection.
Putin, in his first public remarks on the attack, made no reference to a statement by IS claiming responsibility.
He has said that “all the perpetrators, organisers and those who ordered this crime will be justly and inevitably punished”.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said rescue workers were still pulling bodies from the burnt-out building on Saturday.
Rescuers would continue to scour the site for “several days”, the Moscow region’s governor said.
About 107 people were still in hospital, many in a critical condition, said the deputy prime minister, Tatyana Golikova.
Welcome to our latest live coverage of the aftermath of the concert hall massacre in Moscow. The official death toll stands at 133. Here’s an overview of the latest:
Russia will observe a national day of mourning on Sunday after the country’s deadliest attack for almost two decades.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has vowed to punish those behind the “barbaric terrorist attack”, saying four gunmen trying to flee to Ukraine had been arrested.
Ukraine has strongly denied any connection, with the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, accusing Putin of trying to shift the blame on to them.
At least 133 people, including three children, were killed and 150 others injured when camouflaged gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall, in Moscow’s northern suburb of Krasnogorsk, and then set fire to the building.
As Russia lowered flags to half-mast for a day of mourning on Sunday over the deadly concert hall attack, officials said Russia had launched airstrikes on Kyiv and the western Ukrainian region of Lviv.
Poland’s armed forces said one of Russia’s cruise missiles briefly violated Polish airspace.
“The object entered Polish space near the town of Oserdow (Lublin Voivodeship) and stayed there for 39 seconds,” Poland’s armed forces said on the social media platform X. “During the entire flight, it was observed by military radar systems.”
The armed forces said that Poland, a Nato member, and allied aircraft were activated during the attack to ensure the safety of Poland’s airspace.
Meanwhile, Ukraine air defence forces destroyed about a dozen of Russia-launched missiles over Kyiv and in the vicinity of the capital, Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said. Only minor damage was reported from the attack.
In other developments:
A US national security council spokesperson said Islamic State bore sole responsibility for the attack and there was no Ukrainian involvement “whatsoever”. Adrienne Watson said that the US government a few weeks ago shared information with Russia about a planned attack in Moscow and issued a public advisory to Americans in Russia on 7 March.
Several security analysts have said Islamic State’s claim of responsibility appears to be plausible and fits with a pattern of previous marauding attacks by Islamist militants.
The owner of the Crocus City Hall has said the building will be restored. “We will never forget those who fell victims to terrorists. What was destroyed by their dirty hands will be restored,” Crocus Group said in a statement.
Islamic State released what it said was footage of the attack. The 1.31-minute video, released on Saturday on the group’s Telegram channels, shows a closeup view of one of the gunmen opening fire on several people as he enters what appears to be the concert hall.
The four suspected gunmen arrested were all foreign citizens, Russia’s interior ministry said.
Images from inside the venue show the auditorium has been completely gutted by fire and the roof has collapsed. Russian authorities say people died both from gunshot wounds and the effects of the fire.
Ukrainian military intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov told Reuters: “Ukraine was of course not involved in this terror attack. Ukraine is defending its sovereignty from Russian invaders, liberating its own territory and is fighting with the occupiers’ army and military targets, not civilians.”
A Russian airstrike hit Ukrainian critical infrastructure in the western Lviv region on Sunday morning, local governor Maksym Kozytskyi said.
“There were two preliminary hits to the same critical infrastructure facility that the occupiers targeted at night,” Kozytskyi wrote on Telegram.