According to Russian authorities, four Tajiks carried out the attack on Friday evening, March 22, during a show at Crocus City Hall in the Moscow suburbs. At least 133 people are said to have been killed in the attack, which has been claimed by the Islamic State group. The Islamic State-affiliated Amaq news agency released images of the carnage in which militants can be heard shouting. Allahu Akbar The latest attack draws attention once again to Central Asia, a region plagued by radical Islam and terrorism.
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With our regional correspondent, Regis Gente
It is an offshoot of the Islamic State, known as Khorasan, EI-K, that claimed responsibility for the attack on Crocus City Hall. It is a branch of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, which was founded in 2015.
It is composed of Afghans, Pakistanis, but especially Central Asians, Tajiks and Uzbeks.
But listenAttack in Moscow: “Russia has long been a target of Islamic networks”
Muslim blood on Moscow’s hands?
He seems very active Russia This has recently led to several crackdowns by Russian forces against them, most notably in Ingushetia in early March, where six Islamists were killed.
EI-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.
Other citizens of former Soviet republics in Central Asia have committed terrorist acts in Russia in recent years, such as a young ethnic Uzbek from Kyrgyzstan who carried out a bomb attack in the St. Petersburg metro in 2017.
Like thousands of others who joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in the 2010s, he was recruited from among the more than 5 million Central Asian labor migrants who settled in Russia.
Also readMoscow attack: Putin exposes Ukraine, denies any role in killings claimed by ISIS
