Panic, loud screams and indiscriminate shooting.
The witness Aleksej tells about the horror from inside the concert hall.
– We heard several gunshots from automatic weapons and a terrible scream from a woman, he told AFP.
The bloody terrorist attack in a concert hall in Moscow is the deadliest attack in Russia in nearly 20 years.
On clips spread on social media, visitors can be seen fleeing for their lives, bodies lying on the floor and how camouflaged men shoot several people dead in cold blood.
The witness Aleksej tells about the horror from inside where at least 60 people were murdered and over 100 were injured.
– People started running towards the stage. It was chaotic, he told the AFP news agency.
Hiding in lodge: “Terrible scream”
Mobile footage from inside shows the perpetrators shooting people dead, one by one, as they make their way through the foyer. Then they also start shooting towards the stands, where several hundred are forced to take cover in the rows of seats.
Aleksej hid in a box in front of the stage together with several others and finally managed to get out. When he reached the exit, he saw nothing but smoke and ash.
– We heard several gunshots from automatic weapons and a terrible scream from a woman. Then several screams were heard, he told AFP.
“Played dead – the girl next to me got killed”
There have also been lots of other witness statements from within Crocus. Among other things, a video was spread on the Telegram channel Baza. There, a woman who has burns says that she avoided death.
– They were standing there at the exit, we didn’t go there, they saw us. Some of them ran in there and started shooting at people I fell on the floor and pretended to be dead and the girl next to me was killed. I crawled towards the exit after a while and I realized that no one was there and then I could run from there, she says.
During Friday evening, the Islamic terrorist group IS claimed the deed.