Three children have died as a result of a terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall outside Moscow on Friday night, according to hospital data posted on the Moscow Region’s Health Ministry website.
At least five children were among those hospitalized after the massacre, officials have said.
The venue was booked for a rock concert when the atrocity took place, with heavily armed gunmen breaking into the building and indiscriminately shooting visitors. They then reportedly set fire to the building.
The death toll stands at more than 60, although that number may rise, the Russian Investigative Committee told the media early on Saturday.
Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko has said that of the people that have been hospitalized, at least five are children. Their ages range from seven to 12, and two 12-year-olds are currently in serious condition. An 11-year-old girl is in moderately serious condition with a gunshot wound, while her mother was among those killed, local authorities reported. Her father and older sister survived unscathed.
Earlier, children’s ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova told broadcaster Rossiya 24 that a boy with a gunshot wound was among the children being treated.
The Crocus City complex, located in Krasnogorsk, just northwest of Moscow, includes sports and leisure facilities besides the concert venue where the attack took place. A number of other children were there that evening, visiting from nearby towns and taking part in competitions. All were evacuated unharmed, local media reported.
Several witnesses say there were multiple families with their children among the Friday night crowd in the building when the shooting began.
“People carried their children in their arms. No one knew where it was safe at the time, there was this incomprehensible feeling of what could meet us in the hall, or on the street,” lawmaker Ayder Metshin, who was there for the concert, told RT.
He added that he and other concertgoers had stayed low to the ground and exited at the back of the hall along with the musicians, before making their way out of the venue.
“There was a feeling of some kind of denial, I couldn’t believe that this was happening,” he said.