For now, 29 victims out of the 133 killed have been identified after the Moscow attack, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations reported this Saturday, March 23, the day after the attack, claimed by the Islamic State group. . Rescuers continue to clear debris from Crocus City Hall.
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From our correspondent in Moscow,
The concert hall area is still inaccessible to cars in the capital of Russia. Access is via a metro station, not even the closest, then on foot, in the gray spring snow.
The building remains completely black, and at the slightest breath of wind, the smell of burning stings the nostrils. The parking lot is still closed, there are still volunteer rescuers there.
Their work ? Wait and accompany those who fled the attack at full speed, and who hope to find, on a staircase in the shopping center, in the rubble of the room, some personal belongings.
Above all, there is, right next to it, an improvised memorial during the night from Friday to Saturday. The flames had not yet gone out when people came from all over Moscow to leave flowers, candles, stuffed animals…
The silence in the crowd is heavy. Everyone seems walled in their pain. Among the people met there, there were these two 15-year-old girls who were still in shock. One of them confides.
We live nearby. We saw smoke from our windows. And in the focus group that we have, one of our class teachers asked, “Are you all home?” » We texted right away and said yes. We were very scared, because some of our relatives and friends could very well have been there. And we immediately started watching the news. All of our families were sitting in front of the TV, watching, worried, calling all our loved ones to find out where they were. We are very happy, because nothing happened to anyone. But what happened makes us so sad.
“It doesn’t matter who did it.”
The flow is uninterrupted; we come in thick silence, alone, with friends, with family, all ages combined. The words that come up most often here are shock and sorrow. We see tears flowing.
“ It’s a terrible tragedysays a woman accompanied by her husband and two children. We just want to express our compassion for the deceased people, who are not guilty of anything. We want to share this grief with their loved ones and support them. »
“ This is our common problem, a tragedy and a common pain, consider a woman who came alone with a bouquet of carnations. But I think it’s better not to talk about itUkraine. To me, anyway, it doesn’t matter who did it. What matters is that people, including children, died. This is a tragedy, because there is no going back. »
By the end of the day, the Russian political class had begun to agitate, with voices calling for the return of the death penalty. A petition to this effect will be launched on Monday.
Russian authorities announced this Saturday the arrest of the four attackers who opened fire with automatic weapons before setting fire to the building with an flammable liquid.
The testimony of a survivor
Cameraman Ivan Pomorin was supposed to film the concert. He was part of the crowd that was seen on a high bridge running and leaving the mall where the venue was located. He came back to Crocus Hall this Saturday evening to try to find some things. He recounts his distressing flight and what in his eyes is a failure in health and safety support.
When we were running out there on the bridge, of course it was scary, because people brought in a man with a gunshot wound and no ambulance could take him. I realized, as a professional who has been filming a TV series with ambulances for seven years, that there was still an injured man lying on the ground. The friends moved it. That is to say that the entire ambulance group was extremely far away, and we had to drag this man ourselves, with our own hands, for 200 meters, maybe 300, to a emergency vehicle. The firefighters arrived late, the ambulances arrived late. I haven’t seen any ambulances here on this street, ready to serve, as they usually should be at public events. I haven’t seen any and I don’t know why. Maybe they were just somewhere in the wrong place, but personally I didn’t see anything. I saw building security absolutely helpless in terms of coordinating our exit onto the bridge, helpless in terms of coordinating how to evacuate people from the room.
Ivan Pomorin, cameraman, survivor of the Moscow attack
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