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Moscow terror attack: ‘Are you sure it’s ISIS?', Russia asks US on terror outfit's role in Crocus Hall shooting
Moscow attack: The ISIS group on Telegram claimed that the attack was “carried out by four of its men armed with machine guns, a pistol, knives and firebombs”.
Was Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) really behind the shooting at Moscow's Crocus Hall which killed nearly 140 people and injured 182? Russia has challenged the assertions made by the United States on a possible ISIS-K hand behind one of the worst terror attacks on its soil in decades.
Four men, including a Tajik national, stormed the concert hall on Friday, spraying spectators with bullets during a concert by the Soviet-era rock group Picnic.
The Islamic State group on Telegram had claimed that the attack was "carried out by four of its terrorists armed with machine guns, a pistol, knives and firebombs" as part of "the raging war" with "countries fighting Islam".
Contrary to popular claims of an ISIS-K role in the attack, Russian president Vladimir Putin had hinted at a possible Ukraine hand in the massacre. “They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” the Russian leader had said.
Putin had ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, triggering a major European war after eight years of conflict in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces on one side and pro-Russian Ukrainians and Russian proxies on the other.
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Russia's foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, in an article for the
Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, accused the US of evoking "bogeyman" of Islamic State to cover its "wards" in Kyiv, and reminded readers that Washington had supported the "mujahideen" fighters who fought Soviet forces in the 1980s.
"Attention - a question to the White House: Are you sure it's ISIS? Might you think again about that?" Reuters quoted Zakharova as saying in the article.
Meanwhile, Kremlin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia could not comment on the Islamic State claim while the investigation was ongoing, and would not comment on the U.S. intelligence, saying it was sensitive information.
(With agency inputs)
