…as FSB apprehends 11 suspects
Crocus City Hall is a major concert venue right outside the Russian capital. The Crocus City Hall complex, where a major terrorist attack took place on Friday night, sits just outside of Moscow’s city limits, in the urban settlement of Krasnogorsk. It opened in October 2009, and was named after Muslim Magomayev (1942-2008), a legendary Soviet singer born in present-day Azerbaijan.
The concert venue is located on the northern end of the Crocus City site, in the same block as a convention hall and the Aquarium Hotel. South of it are the Vegas shopping mall and Crocus City Expo center. The complex also includes a children’s amusement center and a wedding venue.
Crocus City Hall boasts an auditorium with over 13,000 seats, a concert hall with 7,500 seats, and a theater with capacity of around 5,500. It lies on the Moscow Ring Road, 30 minutes from the city center by Metro.
The venue hosted the 2013 Miss Universe pageant – owned at the time by American businessman and future president, Donald Trump – and has hosted numerous concerts by prominent Western performers such as A-ha, Eric Clapton, and Joe Cocker.
The entire complex was built by and named after the Crocus Group, owned by the Azerbaijani-born businessman Aras Agalarov.
At least 60 people have been killed and more than 100 injured as a result of what Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) described as a terrorist attack. After opening fire outside the concert venue on Friday evening, the attackers reportedly detonated an explosive device that started a fire inside. The concert hall has been heavily damaged by the blaze and there are reports that parts of the building have collapsed.
Meanwhile, eleven people have been detained over the terrorist attack on the Crocus Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said in a statement.
The arrested suspects include “four terrorists who were directly involved in the terrorist attack on Crocus,” the statement read. Investigative work to track down other accomplices are ongoing, it added.
After carrying out the attack on Friday night, “the perpetrators tried to escape by car, fleeing towards the Russian-Ukrainian border,” the FSB said on Saturday. “The criminals intended to cross the Russia-Ukraine border and had relevant contacts on the Ukrainian side,” it added.
According to the agency, “all four terrorists” were arrested in Russia’s Bryansk Region within several hours as a result of well-coordinated actions by the security services and the police. The detainees are now being transferred to Moscow, it added.
The attack on Crocus Crocus City Hall was “carefully planned,” with the perpetrators using weapons that had been placed in a stash in advance, the FSB said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee also confirmed that four suspects, who “committed the terrorist attack” on Crocus City Hall, were detained in Bryansk Region, “not far from the border with Ukraine.”
