Death toll rises to 133 from Friday’s Moscow attack said to be worst in country’s modern history

RUSSIA – The death toll from Friday’s attack in Moscow has now risen to 133 people, officials confirmed.

NBC News reported that the Russian Investigative Committee said more bodies were found as emergency responders cleared the rubble from the fiery attack at the Crocus City Hall concert hall.

The search operation at the venue was still underway.

At least 107 people, including three children, are currently in Moscow hospitals with injuries, according to Tatyana Golikova, deputy chairman of the Russian Government.

The latest death toll officially marked the attack as one of the worst terrorist acts in Russia’s modern history, surpassing the casualty number of the hostage crisis at Moscow’s theater in Dubrovka in 2002 where 130 people died.

Read more: Alleged Islamic terrorists hit Russia, 60 dead, over 100 injured in a concert attack

Over 330 people were killed in the Beslan school siege in 2004.

Meanwhile, Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry appeared to hit out at the United States and the West on Saturday over Friday’s attack.

“The main point is that American authorities don’t forget how their information and political environment linked the terrorists who shot people in Crocus City Hall to the banned terrorist organization ISIS,” she said in a statement posted to Telegram.

United States officials confirmed to NBC News that they had been gathering intelligence for months that ISIS could launch a major attack in Russia.

“Now we know in which country these bloody bastards planned to hide from persecution — Ukraine.

“The same country which for ten years has been turning via Western liberal regimes into a center of terrorism spread in Europe,” Zakharova said, referring to findings that the attackers planned to cross the Russian-Ukrainian border after the attack.

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