Moscow concert hall attack: death toll raised to 137 as White House says Ukraine had ‘no involvement whatsoever’– latest news
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White House: Ukraine had ‘no involvement whatsoever’ in concert hall massacre
Ukraine had “no involvement whatsoever” in the massacre in a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 137 people, the White House said.
“Isis bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever,” White House national security council spokesperson, Adrienne Watson, said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group, which has claimed responsibility for the attack.
There was “no” evidence that Ukraine was involved, the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday.
“Isis-K is actually, by all accounts, responsible for what happened,” she said.
The “K” refers to Khorasan, with the attack being claimed by IS’s branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Key events
Closing summary
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Russia is observing a nationwide day of mourning for the worst terror attack on the country’s soil in two decades. The official number of those left injured rose to 154 and Russian authorities raised the death toll to 137 people, including three children, up from an earlier estimate of 133, the Investigation Committee said. It also said 62 bodies have been identified. Hundreds of people brought flowers and other tributes to the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, as local emergency workers continued to search for anyone who may have been left wounded or dead inside the severely damaged entertainment complex.
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The suspects in the Crocus City Hall shooting have reportedly been brought to the Investigation Committee’s headquarters in Moscow.
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The UK’s chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, condemned the Kremlin after it appeared to seek to link Ukraine to the attack, which the Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for. “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,” he said.
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The White House said that Ukraine had “no involvement whatsoever” in the concert hall massacre. “Isis bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever,” White House national security council spokesperson, Adrienne Watson, said.
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Russia launched its third massive missile attack on Ukraine in the past four days, and the second to target the capital of Kyiv, with Poland’s military saying that one of the missiles launched at western Ukraine briefly entered its airspace on Sunday. The operation command of Poland, a Nato member, said in a statement that there was a violation of Polish airspace at 4:23 am (0323GMT) by one of the cruise missiles launched by Russia against towns in western Ukraine. The object entered near the Polish town of Oserdów and stayed there for 39 seconds, the statement said.
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The Polish foreign ministry said it would “demand explanations from the Russian Federation in connection with another violation of the country’s airspace”. The ministry intends to summon the Russian ambassador over the airspace violation, deputy foreign minister Andrzej Szejna told private broadcaster Polsat News.
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Poland’s defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, told reporters that the Russian missile would have been shot down had there been any indication that it was heading towards a target in Poland. Polish and Nato F-16s were activated as part of the strategic response.
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Ukraine sharply increased imports of electricity and halted exports on Sunday after a significant wave of missile and drone attacks on the country’s energy system. “For the current day, electricity imports are forecast at 14,900 megawatt hour (Mwh). No exports are expected,” Ukraine’s energy ministry said in a statement.
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The Ukrainian military 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. “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.
This blog is closing now but you can read all our Ukraine coverage here.
Nato F-16s activated after Russian missile ‘violated Poland’s airspace’
As we reported earlier, the armed forces operational command of Poland, a Nato member, said there was a violation of Polish airspace at 4:23am (0323 GMT) by one of the cruise missiles launched by Russia against towns in western Ukraine.
Poland’s defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, has told reporters that the Russian missile would have been shot down had there been any indication that it was heading towards a target in Poland.
He said that Polish authorities monitored the attack on Ukraine and was in contact with Ukrainian counterparts, the Associated Press reports. Polish and Nato F-16s were activated as part of the strategic response.
“As last night’s rocket attack on Ukraine was one of the most intense since the beginning of the Russian aggression, all the strategic procedures were launched on time and the object was monitored until it left the Polish airspace,” he said.
The dynamics at play in Friday’s attack, with most of the perpetrators apparently radicalised citizens of Tajikistan, are different to the terror attacks in the early part of Putin’s rule, when attackers tended to be from the North Caucasus.
Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services, said: “Central Asian Islamic terrorism remains a real problem for the FSB. The FSB has a lot of experience dealing with extremists in the Caucasus, they have spent huge resources on that, but central Asia is more of a blind spot.”
Predictably, in the aftermath of the attack, rumours and wild theories abounded about who might “really” have been responsible, even as Islamic State took responsibility for the bloodshed.
You can read the full analysis of the state of Russia’s security apparatus by my colleagues, Shaun Walker, Pjotr Sauer and Andrew Roth, here:
White House: Ukraine had ‘no involvement whatsoever’ in concert hall massacre
Ukraine had “no involvement whatsoever” in the massacre in a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 137 people, the White House said.
“Isis bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever,” White House national security council spokesperson, Adrienne Watson, said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group, which has claimed responsibility for the attack.
There was “no” evidence that Ukraine was involved, the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday.
“Isis-K is actually, by all accounts, responsible for what happened,” she said.
The “K” refers to Khorasan, with the attack being claimed by IS’s branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A Russian missile strike hit a Ukrainian underground gas storage site, but it would not affect the supply of natural gas to Ukrainian consumers, Ukrainian state-run energy firm Naftogaz said.
“All nominations of customers for storage and capacity booking services continue to be fulfilled in full,” Naftogaz’s CEO, Oleksiy Chernyshov, said in a statement.
It comes after officials said Russia launched a missile and drone attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and the region of Lviv early on Sunday.
Death toll in Russian concert hall shooting rises to 137 – officials
Russian authorities have raised the death toll from Friday’s concert mass shooting to 137 people, including three children, up from an earlier estimate of 133, the Investigation Committee has said. It also said 62 bodies have been identified.
The suspects in the Crocus City Hall shooting have been brought to the Investigation Committee’s headquarters in Moscow, Russian state news agency RIA reported.
Russia’s Investigative Committee also said on Sunday that guns and rounds of ammunition had been found both there and in a car that was used by the suspected gunmen to flee the scene.
The agency posted a video of the four suspects being dragged into its headquarters in Moscow. There was no statement on the other seven suspects arrested in connection with the attack. Officials have not named the shooters, but said they were all foreign nationals.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Friday’s massacre, but there has since been indications that Russia was pursuing a Ukrainian link despite Kyiv’s insistence Ukraine had no involvement in the attack.
Meduza, an independent Russian-language website, has reported that Russian state-funded and pro-government media had been instructed by the Putin administration to emphasise possible “traces” of Ukrainian involvement in the deadly concert hall attack, according to two state media employees.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, did not name the Islamic State terror group – which claimed responsibility for the massacre – during his public statements on the attack, while directly accusing the “Ukrainian side” of involvement. Kyiv has denied any involvement in the attack.
More than 5,000 people have donated blood to those injured in the attack at the Crocus City concert hall that killed at least 133 people and wounded over 150 others, officials said, with many reportedly standing in long queues outside clinics.
Family and friends of those still missing after the attack on the Crocus City concert hall outside Moscow that killed over 130 people are still waiting for news of their loved ones amid Russia’s day of national mourning on Sunday, as the Associated Press reports.
Events at cultural institutions were canceled, 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.
“People came to a concert, some people came to relax with their families, and any one of us could have been in that situation. And I want to express my condolences to all the families that were affected here and I want to pay tribute to these people,” Andrey Kondakov, one of the mourners who came to lay flowers at the memorial said.
“It is a tragedy that has affected our entire country,” said kindergarten employee Marina Korshunova. “It just doesn’t even make sense that small children were affected by this event.” Three children were among the dead.
Russia says it has scrambled one of its Mig-31 fighter jets in response to what it says is an approach by two US bombers over the Barents Sea, according to a report by the Russian state broadcaster RIA picked up by Reuters.
The US bombers turned away from the Russian border after the approach of the MiG-31, the Russian defence ministry said.
Summary of the day so far…
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Russia is observing a nationwide day of mourning for the worst terror attack on the country’s soil in two decades, as the official number of those left injured rose to 154. Russian authorities have said they expect the death toll to rise with at least one dozen victims still in critical condition. Hundreds of people brought flowers and other tributes to the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, as local emergency workers say they are still continuing to search for anyone who may be left wounded or dead inside the severely damaged entertainment complex.
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The UK’s chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, condemned the Kremlin after it appeared to seek to link Ukraine to the attack, which the Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for. “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,” he said.
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Russia launched its third massive missile attack on Ukraine in the past four days, and the second to target the capital of Kyiv, with Poland’s military saying that one of the missiles launched at western Ukraine briefly entered its airspace on Sunday. The operation command of Poland, a Nato member, said in a statement that there was a violation of Polish airspace at 4:23 am (0323GMT) by one of the cruise missiles launched by Russia against towns in western Ukraine. The object entered near the Polish town of Oserdów and stayed there for 39 seconds, the statement said.
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The Polish foreign ministry said it would “demand explanations from the Russian Federation in connection with another violation of the country’s airspace”. The ministry intends to summon the Russian ambassador over the airspace violation, deputy foreign minister Andrzej Szejna told private broadcaster Polsat News.
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Ukraine sharply increased imports of electricity and halted exports on Sunday after a significant wave of missile and drone attacks on the country’s energy system. “For the current day, electricity imports are forecast at 14,900 megawatt hour (Mwh). No exports are expected,” Ukraine’s energy ministry said in a statement.
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The Ukrainian military 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. “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.
Islamic State has released new videos of the attack on the Crocus City concert hall outside Moscow that left 133 people dead, corroborating the terror group’s claim to have masterminded the slaughter even as Russia has sought to place the blame on Ukraine, which Kyiv denies.
The videos, which were published by IS’s news agency Amaq, showed the gunmen filming themselves as they hunted concertgoers through the lobby of the Crocus City Hall and fired at them from pointblank range, killing scores of people.
At one point, one of the gunmen tells another to “kill them and have no mercy”.
You can read the full story by the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, Andrew Roth, here:
The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, has disregarded the US intelligence reports saying that the Islamic State group was behind the Moscow concert hall attack.
“I wish they could have solved the assassination of their own President Kennedy so quickly,” she wrote on Telegram. “But no, for more than 60 years they have not been able to find out who killed him after all. Or maybe that was Isis too?
“Until the investigation into the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall is completed, any phrase from Washington exonerating Kyiv should be considered as evidence,” she said.
“After all, the financing of terrorist activities of the Kyiv organised criminal group by the American liberal democrats and participation in the corrupt schemes of the Biden family have been going on for many years.”
Kyiv has vociferously denied any links to the attack and has indicated it believes Moscow is preparing a pretext to escalate the conflict.
Ukraine ramps up electricity imports after series of attacks on energy system
Ukraine sharply increased imports of electricity and halted exports on Sunday after a significant wave of missile and drone attacks on the country’s energy system.
“For the current day, electricity imports are forecast at 14,900 megawatt hour (Mwh). No exports are expected,” Ukraine’s energy ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine imported 3,300 Mwh a day before the missile and drone attacks on Friday, with exports of 2,148 Mwh.
Generating and transmission facilities were attacked by Russia on Friday, causing significant blackouts in many regions which left more than a million Ukrainians without power. Energy facilities in three Ukrainian regions were also attacked this morning.
The ministry said Russians had attempted to hit a critical energy infrastructure facility in the Lviv region.
“Equipment caught fire and the facility was de-energised. There were no casualties. The consequences are being assessed,” the ministry said.
It said that as a result power lines in the Kyiv region were damaged and 1,400 households in two settlements had lost power.
Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, has responded to claims that the Ukrainian military had hit two large Russian landing ships in attacks on the annexed Crimean peninsula on Sunday morning (see post at 08.53 for more details).
He wrote on Telegram that transport infrastructure including passenger boats was partially damaged.
“Of the six boats, five had their windows broken … During the day, the windows of the damaged boats will be replaced and as they are restored they will be brought back online,” he said.
Razvozhayev also said that three passenger buses, 13 school buses and one trolley bus were among the damaged vehicles during the overnight attacks.
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