What is ISIS-K, the militant group that claimed responsibility for the Moscow concert hall attack?

Camouflage-clad assailants burst into a large concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire.

They killed over 60 people, injured more than 100 and set fire to the venue.

The brazen attack on Crocus City Hall, about 20 km (12 miles) from the Kremlin, comes just days after Russian president Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.

The Islamic State group, the militant group that once sought control over swathes of Iraq and Syria, has claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on affiliated channels on social media.

Notably, the US intelligence agencies had gathered information in recent weeks that the IS branch was planning an attack in Moscow. They privately shared the intelligence earlier this month with Russian officials, according to The Associated Press.

Here’s all we know about the deadly attack and the Islamic State’s Afghan branch known as ISIS-K.

What do we know about the Moscow concert hall attack?

The recent attack, which left Crocus City Hall, which is a large music venue on Moscow’s western edge that can accommodate 6,200 people, in flames with a collapsing roof, was the deadliest in Russia since the 2004 Beslan school siege. It also came as the country’s war in Ukraine dragged into a third year. The attack took place as crowds gathered for a performance by the Soviet-era rock band Picnic.

A verified video showed people taking their seats in the hall, then rushing for the exits as repeated gunfire echoed above screams. Other videos showed men shooting at groups of people. Some victims lay motionless in pools of blood, according to Reuters. Videos showed the building on fire, with a huge cloud of smoke rising through the night sky. The street was lit up by the blinking blue lights of dozens of firetrucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles, as fire helicopters buzzed overhead to dump water on the blaze that took hours to contain.

The country’s top criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, reported early Saturday that more than 60 people were killed. Health authorities released a list of 145 injured, 115 of whom were hospitalised, including five children. Some Russian news reports suggested more victims could have been trapped by the blaze that erupted after the assailants threw explosives.

According to The Guardian, President Putin wished a speedy recovery of all those injured in the terrorist incident in his initial remarks regarding the shooting. The Federal Security Service (FSB) chief, Alexander Bortnikov, was among the security leaders providing updates to the Kremlin regarding the situation.

Guards at the concert hall didn’t have guns, and some could have been killed at the start of the attack, Russian media reported. Some Russian news outlets suggested the assailants fled before special forces and riot police arrived. Reports said police patrols were looking for several vehicles the attackers could have used to escape.

By late evening, Russian authorities had launched a mass manhunt for the gunmen in the attack, warning residents in Moscow and its suburbs to look out for signs of the attackers. The Russian government did not immediately identify any of the suspects. Russia tightened security at airports, transport hubs and across the capital - a vast urban area of over 21 million people. All large-scale public events were cancelled across the country, according to Reuters.

“A terrible tragedy occurred in the shopping centre Crocus City today,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. “I am sorry for the loved ones of the victims.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said it was a “bloody terrorist attack” that the entire world should condemn.

The United States, European and Arab powers and many former Soviet republics expressed shock and sent their condolences. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied any Ukrainian involvement. The United Nations Security Council condemned what it called a “heinous and cowardly terrorist attack.”

Also read: Is Russia eyeing weapons from the Taliban for Ukraine war?

Who was behind the attack and why?

In a statement posted by its Aamaq news agency, the Islamic State group said it attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk on Moscow’s outskirts, killing and wounding hundreds. It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the claim.

While the attack by ISIS-K in Russia on Friday was a dramatic escalation, experts said the group has opposed Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent years.

Putin changed the course of the Syrian civil war by intervening in 2015, supporting President Bashar al-Assad against the opposition and the Islamic State. “ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years, frequently criticising Putin in its propaganda,” AP quoted Colin Clarke of Soufan Centre, a Washington-based research group.

Michael Kugelman of the Washington-based Wilson Centre said that ISIS-K “sees Russia as being complicit in activities that regularly oppress Muslims.” He added that the group also counts as members a number of Central Asian militants with their own grievances against Moscow.

Noting that the IS statement cast its claim as an attack targeting Christians, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on the terrorist group, said it appeared to reflect the group’s strategy of “striking wherever they can as part of a global ‘fight the infidels and apostates everywhere.’”

What is ISIS-K?

Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), named after an old term for the region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, emerged in eastern Afghanistan in late 2014. Founded by disaffected members of the Pakistani Taliban, the group quickly established a reputation for extreme brutality, as per The New York Times.

Situated along drug and people-smuggling routes in and out of Pakistan, ISIS-K is headquartered in the eastern province of Nangarhar, as per BBC News.

One of the most active regional affiliates of the Islamic State militant group, ISIS-K, has seen its membership decline since peaking around 2018. By 2021, the number of its fighters had been reduced to approximately 1,500–2,000 due to a combination of US airstrikes and Afghan commando raids that resulted in the deaths of many of its leaders, reported NYT.

The group got a dramatic second wind soon after the Taliban toppled the Afghan government that year.

The US has said its ability to develop intelligence against extremist groups in Afghanistan, such as ISIS-K, has been reduced since the withdrawal of US troops from the country in 2021.

Also read: What is Islamic State’s Voice of Hind propaganda magazine, seeking to spread terror in India?

What is the history of ISIS-K?

ISIS-K has a history of attacks, including against mosques, schools, hospitals, and even a maternity ward, inside and outside Afghanistan.

Although it has focused most of its activities on Nangahar and Kabul, it has also claimed responsibility for attacks in the provinces of Herat, Jowzjan, Paktia, Kunduz, and Kunar, as per BBC.

It has targeted religious minorities, such as Shia Muslims and Sikhs, US and NATO personnel, Afghan security forces, Afghan politicians and ministries, the Taliban, and foreign groups, such as aid organisations.

Earlier this year, the US intercepted communications confirming the group carried out twin bombings in Iran that killed nearly 100 people, according to AP.

In September 2022, ISIS-K militants claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in Kabul.

During the US military withdrawal from the country, the group carried out a suicide bombing at Kabul’s International Airport in August 2021 that killed 13 US troops and as many as 170 civilians. The attack raised ISIS-K’s international profile, positioning it as a major threat to the Taliban’s ability to govern, according to AP.

Since then, the Taliban and ISIS-K have engaged in fierce battles in Afghanistan. Despite the worst-case scenarios outlined following the fall of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government, the security services of the Taliban have so far stopped the group from gaining territory or recruiting huge numbers of former fighters who are bored during peacetime.

The broader Islamic State group has claimed deadly attacks across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Europe, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Earlier this month, the top US general in the Middle East said ISIS-K could attack US and Western interests outside of Afghanistan “in as little as six months and with little to no warning.”

How common are terror attacks in Russia?

Although terror attacks are quite uncommon in Russia, there have been a few massive ones since 2004. Here’s a look at past terror attacks in Russia.

In the 2004 Beslan school siege, Islamist militants took more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children, hostage.

In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS downed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacationers returning from Egypt. The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, has claimed several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in the past few years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.

According to BBC, a bomb attack in 2017 on the St Petersburg metro that killed 15 people was also linked to radical Islamists.

On 7 March this year, Russia’s top security agency said it thwarted an attack on a synagogue in Moscow by an Islamic State cell, killing several of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital, as per AP. A few days earlier, Russian authorities said six alleged IS members were killed in a shootout in Ingushetia in Russia’s Caucasus region.

With inputs from The Associated Press and Reuters