Deaths and injuries have been reported after a gun attack at a concert hall near Moscow, Russian media say.

At least four people dressed in camouflage opened fire at the Crocus City Hall, social media video verified by the BBC shows.

Video obtained by Reuters news agency shows a large blaze and smoke rising from the hall.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry described the incident as a “terrorist attack”. Specialist police are at the scene

Footage on social media showed gunmen inside the concert hall while state media reported that some people were still inside.

Tass news agency reported a third of the concert venue is on fire and the roof is almost completely ablaze.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called on the international community to condemn the incident, which it called “a monstrous crime”.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the images of the shooting were “horrible and hard to watch”.

    • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      That wouldn’t make sense.

      Putin was behind a series of apartment bombings when Yeltsin was president, thus making Yeltsin look weak. Yeltsin stepped down shortly after the bombings.

      But now Putin is president, so whoever is behind this attack is making Putin look weak.

      • ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Unless a perpetrator is quickly identified and Putin sends the spetsnaz to get them. Then he will look like a strong leader who can defeat Russia’s enemies.

        • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Even if the perpetrators were killed at the scene, whoever is in charge looks incompetent.

          I mean, the government killed the Uvalde shooter but everyone still thought the government was incompetent.

      • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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        3 months ago

        Not saying it’s a false flag, but in this case the goal of the false flag would be to put blame on Ukraine.

        • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Every time Ukraine successfully strikes deep inside Russia, the Russian government is embarrassed. That’s why Russia prefers blaming careless cigarette butts than blaming Ukraine.

            • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Not calling it a war looks even worse if the country you are not at war with just killed dozens of people in your capital. So if this a false flag op, it’s inherently self-contradictory.

        • sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Putin does not control everything that happens in Russia either. That would be ridiculous. Maybe he had some warning but didn’t take it seriously, but he certainly didn’t support it and he certainly didn’t do it.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      3 months ago

      I’m not gonna beat up on Moscow for that one. Probably wasn’t the best handling, but they had no incentive to mishandle it. It was a difficult hostage situation, and it could have also played out worse, as there were bombs in the theater.

      It’s hard to estimate an exact amount of gas that would incapacitate one person without killing someone else.

      I’d like to think that we’d have done better than kill off a ton of the hostages in a similar situation, but we’ve also dicked up some hostage situations too, even where we’ve got lots of resources and time to plan.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        A fentanyl-based gas that kills a bunch of people is what I would call poison. You call it what you’d like.

  • TipRing@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    ISIS has claimed responsibility, though they have not yet provided evidence to support this.

      • ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        If the US wasn’t largely compromised by Russian assets, Tucker being one of them, would this war have even started?

        Even from a non-American central viewpoint, anything that takes away from Russia asset pool is a positive, no?

        This is looking more and more like a Ruzzian inside job to drum up war support, as is Ruzzian tradition

        • PrettyLights@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          If the US wasn’t largely compromised by Russian assets, Tucker being one of them, would this war have even started?

          Uh, yeah most likely. See: 2014 Annexation