Key Takeaways
- US Vice President Kamala Harris blames ISIS-Khorasan for the Moscow concert hall attack.
- The attack killed at least 137 people, making it the deadliest in Russia in nearly 20 years.
- The Russian Federal Security Service is conducting an investigation into the attack.
Washington: Washington sees no evidence that Kiev had a hand in a terrorist attack on a concert hall near Moscow, US Vice President Kamala Harris said, claiming that a branch of the Islamic State terrorist group known as ISIS-Khorasan was behind the massacre.
“No, there is no, whatsoever, any evidence [of Ukrainian involvement]. And in fact, what we know to be the case is that ISIS-K is actually by all accounts responsible for what happened,” Harris said in an interview with the ABC News broadcaster on Sunday.
She also described the attack as “an act of terrorism.”
“The number of people who have been killed is obviously a tragedy, and we should all send our condolences to those families,” Harris added.
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov told Sputnik that there was no need to jump to conclusions, commenting on recent US statements about the ISIS involvement in the terrorist attack, as Russian special services were conducting investigations to find those responsible for the incident.
The shooting happened on Friday evening at the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow. A Sputnik correspondent witnessed the attack, reporting that at least three men in camouflage broke into the music hall and shot people point-blank, throwing incendiary bombs. The death toll reached 143 people, according to Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT and the Rossiya Segodnya media group.
Eleven people were detained in connection with the attack, including four who were directly involved, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said. All four suspected gunmen were detained in the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Belarus and Ukraine, the FSB added. The four suspects were charged with terrorism and ordered to be held in pretrial custody until May 22, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court said. All of them are from Tajikistan and risk a life sentence in prison.
The Moscow-area concert hall shooting became the deadliest attack in Russia in nearly 20 years.
