Russia casts doubt on ISIS responsibility for concert attack

Russia on Monday cast doubt on assertions by the United States that the Islamic State militant group was responsible for a gun attack on a concert hall outside Moscow that killed 137 people and injured 182 more.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, a claim which the United States has publicly said it believed, and the militant group has since released what it says is footage from the attack. 

US officials said they warned Russia of intelligence about an imminent attack earlier this month.

But President Vladimir Putin has not publicly mentioned the Islamist militant group in connection with the attackers, who he said had been trying to escape to Ukraine.


Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, called into question US assertions that Islamic State, which once sought control over swathes of Iraq and Syria, was behind the attack.

"Attention - a question to the White House: Are you sure it's ISIS? Might you think again about that?" Zakharova said in an article for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

Zakharova said the United States was spreading a version of the "bogeyman" of Islamic State to cover its "wards" in Kyiv and reminded readers that Washington supported the "mujahideen" fighters who fought Soviet forces in the 1980s.

Reuters