MOSCOW, Russia
Russia lowered flags to half-mast on Sunday for a day of mourning after scores of people were gunned down at a rock concert near Moscow in the deadliest attack inside the country in decades.
Russian President Vladimir
Putin declared a National Day of Mourning after pledging to track down and
punish all those behind the attack, which left 133 people dead, including three
children, and more than 150 injured.
"I express my deep,
sincere condolences to all those who lost their loved ones," Putin said in
an address to the nation on Saturday, his first public comments on the attack.
"The whole country and our entire people are grieving with you."
Islamic State (ISIS) has
claimed responsibility, but Russian officials said the claim has not been
verified. Putin has said the attackers had been trying to escape to Ukraine and
he asserted that some on "the Ukrainian side" had prepared to spirit
them across the border.
Ukraine has repeatedly denied
any role in the attack, which Putin also blamed on "international
terrorism."
People laid flowers at Crocus City Hall, the 6,200-seat concert hall outside Moscow where four armed men burst in on Friday just before Soviet-era rock group Picnic was to perform its hit "Afraid of Nothing".
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The men fired their automatic
weapons in short bursts at terrified civilians who fell screaming in a hail of
bullets. It was the deadliest attack on Russian territory since the 2004 Beslan
school siege.
Long lines formed in Moscow on
Saturday to donate blood, and in the southwestern city of Voronezh, people laid
flowers and lit candles at a monument to children who died there in a World War
II bombing, in solidarity with those who died in the attack near Moscow.
"We, like the whole
country, are with you," the governor of the Voronezh region, Alexander
Gusev, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia's Federal Security
Service (FSB) revealed on Saturday that 11 individuals connected to the attack
were apprehended, including four direct perpetrators, noting that the gunmen
had contacts in Ukraine and were captured near the border.
"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," Putin
said.
In video footage published by
Russian media and Telegram channels with close ties to the Kremlin, one of the
suspects said he was offered money to carry out the attack.
"I shot people," the
suspect, his hands tied and his hair held by an interrogator, a black boot
beneath his chin, said in poor and highly accented Russian.
When asked why, he said: "For money." The man said he had been promised half a million roubles (a little over $5,000). One was shown answering questions through a Tajik translator.
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