Russia says 60 dead, 145 injured in concert hall raid; Islamic State group claims responsibility

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 273 points – Russia says 40 dead, 145 injured in concert hall raid; Islamic State group claims responsibility
apnews.com

Assailants burst into a large concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing over 60 people, injuring more than 100 and setting fire to the venue in a brazen attack just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on affiliated channels on social media. A U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies had learned the group’s branch in Afghanistan was planning an attack in Moscow and shared the information with Russian officials.

It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the attackers after the raid, which state investigators were investigating as terrorism. 

The attack, which left the concert hall in flames with a collapsing roof, was the deadliest in Russia in years and came as the country’s war in Ukraine dragged into a third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the raid a “huge tragedy.”

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Player 3 has entered the game.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/world/europe/isis-moscow-attack-concert-hall.html

After a period of relative quiet, the Islamic State has been trying to increase its external attacks, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials. Most of those plots in Europe have been thwarted, prompting assessments that the group had diminished capabilities.

“ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years,” frequently criticizing President Vladimir V. Putin in its propaganda, said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York. “ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood in its hands, referencing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.”

rolls eyes

Also US intelligence said this was coming

https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-embassy-warns-of-imminent-attacks-by-extremists-in-moscow

Probably some more deep state shit going on here, but the writing was on the wall

Edit: different attack, see reply

Kinda funny how everyone hates the islamists so damn much that even the US and Russia will still pass each other heads ups about possible attacks even while actively fighting a halfway proxy war.

These fuckers just declared war on everyone and everyone responded with, "Ok, you're now at war with all of us.'

Part of the reason it was an embassy announcement. The US gov has a responsibility to protect its citizens. And if they had just passed this quietly to the FSB or something, nothing would have happened, but this both tells US citizens in Russia “yeah probably get out of there” but also puts the ball in Putin’s court in how he responds to the info, it’s a double play

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Nah, I mentioned it in another comment in this thread. We had a press conference and cleared it up. We did warn Russia about an attack earlier in the month, but that was a different one from this one.

https://lemmy.today/comment/6912150

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Russia has always been... not very tolerant... of Muslims in their borders. Cough cough Chechen genocide ca. late 1700s to 2010s

(Coin slot noise)

“Cowaaaabunga”

I’m not sure why you made a turtles in time reference but now I have the character select music stuck in my head…

Unlike most arcade machines, which typically only had positions for two players to play at once, it had four, and would permit for a third concurrent player.

I recall that's what happened when someone joined in during the TMNT arcade game

Rampage really feels like it should be the go-to of 3-player arcade references. Too bad it doesn't have any iconic lines.

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Must have been the LGBTQ community, since they’re now considered “terrorists” in Russia.

When I first saw the news of this I for sure thought Putin was going to use this as a casus belli to invade more nations. Now that ISIS has claimed responsibility I’m not so sure

Maybe they want to have another go at Afghanistan. Seems to always work out well for whoever tries it.

He has to wait 9 more turns, or else he gets 150 grievances. But he’s been denounced by 180 other players, so what does it matter?

If it helped Putin get something he wanted, he would have just ordered the attack himself.

This is interesting, especially since we haven’t heard much from ISIS in several years and that the US warned Russia about it ahead of time.

Now, I’ll just speculate.

The US was helping Ukraine. Then Iran backed an attack by Hamas on Israel, which gave the US a distraction to deal with from supporting Ukraine. There was speculation that Russia pushed Iran to push Hamas to do the attack for this very reason.

Now, US intelligence could be playing the same game. With this attack, Russia has a hard time selling Ukraine as the biggest threat to Russian people. They’re under attack by ISIS terrorists. Surely, this will take some focus off of the Ukraine war and put pressure on Putin to counter ISIS. Somehow the US did have foreknowledge of the attack…

Of course this is all just speculation, but if we’re trying to think like covert ops and play 4D chess, it could make sense.

Well except Iran didn't push Hamas, in fact their reaction to the war seems to indicate that they're privately wanting to choke the life out of Hamas for what they did because they wanted to arrange a full court press with all their chess pieces moving at once instead of Hamas charging in causing Israel to harden even further

If this was an Iran backed move, you'd have seen Iraq basically lighting itself on fire, Syria moving on the Golan Heights, Hezbollah launching attacks on Israel's north and also their desalination plants, the Houthis launching strikes against KSA's oil infrastructure, all while Iran closes the straight of Hormuz.

They've been setting this board since the revolution and they don't want to move any of the pieces until they are at peak assurance that they'll walk away with complete hegemony over the middle east at least as far as the East Mediterranean Coast at the end of it all.

There was speculation that Russia pushed Iran to push Hamas to do the attack for this very reason.

I've wondered about this since it happened. The Kremlin has certainly benefited.

Iran denies being involved in Hamas attack on Israel and had no interest in a further escalation, so it is unlikely that they pushed for it. Russia made deals with Israel, that Israel stays out of sanctions against Russia in return for Russia letting Israel attack Iranian proxies in Syria. Also Israeli drones are used by the russian military and have been shot down over Ukraine.

Iran is very much not happy with how Russia lets Israel bomb them in Syria. They most definetely dont trust Russia enough to take such a risk.

The one who have an interest in blaming October 7 on Iran are Israel and War Hawks in US politics, who want a war with Iran and justify unconditional support of Israel.

ISIS-K, so that probably means troop deployments into central Asia since that's what the K stands for, the "Khorosan Province"

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Looks like 60 dead now in the article, not 40. I remember 40, I think the numbers updated

Unfortunately, the casualty numbers in these types of attacks tend to go up from the initial count.

We told them that this was going to happen.

Bastards just poo-pooed it way, or worse, they let it happen.

I believe that the last guy who decided that it would be a great idea to concurrently pick fights with all of London, Washington, and Moscow was Adolf Hitler.

Come to think of it, we warned Moscow in advance that time too, and Stalin didn't buy it then either.

Hmm. Moscow was in the process of trying to annex a European country around that time too, Finland.

EDIT: Nah, it sounds like we cleared it up. We do believe that this is Islamic State and we did warn Russia about an attack, but it was a different one. Apparently we didn't have intelligence that this one might happen:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mass-shooting-music-venue-crocus-city-hall-moscow-picnic-concert/

A U.S. official tells CBS News the U.S. has intelligence confirming the Islamic State's claims of responsibility, and that they have no reason to doubt those claims. The U.S. official also confirmed that the U.S. provided intelligence to Russia about a potential attack under the intelligence community's Duty to Warn requirement.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson confirmed that in a statement provided to CBS News Friday evening.

"Earlier this month, the U.S. government had information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow —potentially targeting large gatherings, to include concerts— which prompted the State Department to issue a public advisory to Americans in Russia," Watson said. "The U.S. government also shared this information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding 'duty to warn' policy."

Asked about the embassy's notice issued on March 7, Kirby referred the question to the State Department, adding: "I don't think that was related to this specific attack."

Responding to a question about whether Washington had any prior information about the assault, Kirby responded: "I'm not aware of any advance knowledge that we had of this terrible attack."

But how many people were killed by the attackers and how many by the "security" forces?

I hope this doesn’t result in Russian forces in Syria.

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Man imagine if America didn’t invade iraq and created ISIS. We might’ve been living in the good timeline then.

On the contrary, that's another timeline where everyone gets conquered by the Belgians.

We had only a one in a million chance of avoiding that, and this is the only way.

Look, I don't want to be that guy but I whole heartedly welcome our Belgian overlords.

I disagree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold\_II\_of\_Belgium

So moderately worse than what most of the world was doing in that era. Really only behind my country by like 50 years.

I've been listening to the "behind the bastards" podcast. The one about him is very interesting. The guy described him as the first modern bastard. Used propaganda etc. The hand policy was actually terrible to hear of. I'd recommend it, even though a lot of those episodes are tough going they are very interesting and the guests lighten up the show pretty well.

I prefer to imagine where the world didn't support Zionists stealing land.

All of these problems could be avoided if we stopped supporting their religious nationalism.