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It was Friday evening in Moscow when gunmen burst into Crocus City Hall, an entertainment complex on the outskirts of Russia’s capital, where a rock concert by the group Picnic was about to take place. Video showed at least four people opening fire in the building’s foyer before entering the hall itself and continuing to shoot.
Russian authorities said the attackers then set fire to the hall using flammable liquid. Despite helicopters dropping water over the building, it took 10 hours to extinguish the flames.
The March 22 attack lasted about 20 minutes, and in that time, at least 137 people were killed and at least 60 others critically wounded, CBS News partner network BBC News reported. Here’s what we know:
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS, released a statement on Friday claiming responsibility for the attack. The terrorist group issued another statement the following day that cast the raid as part of ISIS’ ongoing war on countries it claims are fighting against Islam.
In a first for ISIS, the statement released by the group’s media propaganda operation attributed the attack to its Russia branch, which it had never identified as such. Previous attacks had been attributed to ISIS in the Caucasus, referring to a broader region that encompasses part of southern Russia, but also some other nations such as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
A U.S. intelligence official told CBS News that American agencies had intelligence confirming ISIS was responsible, and said the U.S. had no reason to doubt the claims made by the group.
About 14 hours after reports of shooting began, Russia’s Federal Security Service said 11 suspects had been arrested, four of whom it accused of being directly involved in the attack.
On March 24, four suspects between the ages of 19 and 32 — identified as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Fayzov — appeared in a Russian court showing signs of severe beatings. They were charged with acts of terrorism. Russia’s state news agency said the four men were from Tajikistan.
There has been suspicion, despite the group’s own claim that a domestic Russian branch of ISIS carried out the attack, that its Afghanistan division, ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, was behind the carnage. That suspicion came largely due to warnings issued by the U.S. in the weeks ahead of the attack, and Russian officials claiming to have thwarted other operations planned by ISIS-K in Russia even more recently.
U.S. officials have not said which branch of ISIS they believe carried out the attack, but they have strongly refuted claims from Russian President Vladimir Putin that there may have been some involvement by Ukraine, a neighboring country that Russia invaded more than two years ago, sparking a full-scale, ongoing war.
Ukraine has also denied any involvement in the attack.
In addition to the previously unheard of Russia branch being named as the perpetrators, the Moscow attack also appeared to deviate from most ISIS assaults in that the terrorists fled the scene. Most violent attacks carried out by the group see their operatives fight arriving law enforcement personnel to the death, rather than being captured or fleeing.
The assault in Moscow came two weeks after the U.S. warned of a potential attack targeting large gatherings in the Russian capital. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow had publicly advised Americans to stay away from events, including concert venues, because of the potential for a terrorist attack.
The U.S. provided intelligence to Russia regarding the potential for an attack under the American intelligence community’s “Duty to Warn” requirement.
“In early March, the U.S. government shared information with Russia about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. “We also issued a public advisory to Americans in Russia on March 7. ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.”
Last week, Putin dismissed the warnings, saying “recent provocative statements by a number of official Western structures about the possibility of terrorist attacks in Russia… resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
“ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack,” U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement. “There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.”
CBS News’ Khaled Wassef and Tucker Reals contributed to this report.
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Khar, Pakistan — The death toll from a massive suicide bombing that targeted an election rally for a pro-Taliban cleric rose to 54 Monday, as Pakistan held funerals and the government vowed to hunt down those behind the attack. No one immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bombing, which also wounded nearly 200 people, but police said their initial investigation suggested the ISIS group’s regional affiliate could be responsible.
The victims were attending a rally organized by the Jamiat Ulema Islam party, headed by hard-line cleric and politician Fazlur Rehman. He did not attend the rally, held under a large tent close to a market in Bajur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan.
Rehman, who has long supported Afghanistan’s Taliban government, escaped at least two known bomb attacks in 2011 and 2014, when bombings damaged his car at rallies.
Victims of the bombing were buried in Bajur on Monday.
As condolences continued to pour in from across the country, dozens of people who received minor injuries were discharged from hospital while the critically wounded were taken to the provincial capital of Peshawar by army helicopters. The death toll continued to rise as critically wounded people died in hospital, physician Gul Naseeb said.
On Monday, police recorded statements from some of the wounded at a hospital in Khar, Bajur’s largest town. Feroz Jamal, the provincial information minister, said police were “investigating this attack in all aspects.”
At least 1,000 people were gathered under a large tent Sunday as their party prepared for parliamentary elections, expected in October or November.
“People were chanting God is Great on the arrival of senior leaders, when I heard the deafening sound of the bomb,” said Khan Mohammad, a local resident who said he was standing outside the tent.
Mohammad said he heard people crying for help, and minutes later ambulances started arriving and taking the wounded away.
Abdul Rasheed, a senior leader in Rehman’s party said the bombing was aimed at weakening the party but that “such attacks cannot deter our resolve.”
Islamist groups have long had a presence in Bajur. The district was formerly a base for al Qaeda and a stronghold of the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The army declared the district clear of the group in 2016 following a series of offensives.
The regional ISIS affiliate, known as the ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, is based in neighboring Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and is a rival of the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda.
Shaukat Abbas, a senior police officer, said that police have made progress in their investigation, but did not provide details.
Pakistani security analyst Mahmood Shah told The Associated Press that breakaway factions of the TTP could also be behind the attack. He said some TTP members have been known to disobey their top leadership to carry out attacks, as have breakaway factions of the group.
Shah said such factions could have perpetrated the attack to cause “confusion, instability and unrest ahead of the elections.”
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is expected to dissolve Pakistan’s parliament in August.
Rehman’s party is part of Sharif’s coalition government, which came to power in April 2022 by ousting former Prime Minister Imran Khan through a no-confidence vote in the legislature.
Sharif called Rehman to express his condolences and assure the cleric that those who orchestrated the attack would be punished. The bombing has also drawn nationwide condemnation, with ruling and opposition parties offering condolences to the families of the victims. The U.S. and Russian embassies in Islamabad also condemned the attack.
Khan condemned the bombing Sunday.
The Pakistani Taliban also distanced themselves from the attack, saying that the attack aimed to set Islamists against each other. Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, wrote in a tweet that “such crimes cannot be justified in any way.”
Sunday’s bombing was one of the four worst attacks in northwestern Pakistan since 2014, when 147 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed in a Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar.
In January, 74 people were killed in a bombing at a mosque in Peshawar. And in February, more than 100 people, mostly policemen, died in a bombing at a mosque inside a high-security compound housing Peshawar police headquarters.