'Kill them and have no mercy', say Moscow gunmen in concert massacre video

Islamic State gunmen who killed more than 130 people in a Moscow concert hall on Friday encouraged each other to show “no mercy” at the scene of the attack, video footage reveals.

The bodycam footage, captured by one of the six gunmen, shows the attackers walking towards the Crocus City Hall music venue with automatic guns.

“Bring the machine gun. Kill them and have no mercy,” one of the attackers is heard saying. Another says: “The infidels will be defeated, God willing. God is great.”

The video, which is too graphic to publish, gives the first close-up view of the attack on Friday night that killed 133 people.

It shows one of the attackers firing at least 10 shots into a group of people at the entrance of the concert hall. Another attacker then slits the throats of injured people lying on the floor.

The attack was the deadliest in Russia by Islamist terrorists in 20 years and has shocked the country.

Sunday was declared an official day of mourning in the Moscow region, with shops, businesses and restaurants ordered to close. Much of the rest of the country also joined in.

Russian officials have now confirmed that one of the gunmen was killed during the attack on the Crocus City Hall and another was killed during a shoot-out at a roadblock outside Moscow.

Russian security forces captured the four other attackers, tracking at least two of them through a forest with dogs.

All four of the captured alleged attackers were Tajik nationals, according to Russian media. Video of their capture showed them confessing to the shootings while being held in stress positions. They had also been beaten.

Emomali Rahmon, president of Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic, condemned the attack in a phone call on Sunday with Vladimir Putin and appeared to disown the alleged attackers. “Terrorists have no nationality, no homeland and no religion,” he said.

On Saturday, Tajikistan’s foreign ministry had said reports that its citizens were involved were “fake”.

Tajiks form a large part of the migrant workforce in Russia. Reports from rights activists in Russia said that police have started intensifying searches of Central Asians living and working in Russia.

Although Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, the Kremlin and its propagandists have linked it to Ukraine. Ukraine has denied any links and the US has said that it passed intelligence to Russia of the Islamist group’s attack plans.

Western analysts have said that the Kremlin wants to shift blame for the attack and also to use it as a recruitment tool for its war in Ukraine.

On Sunday, Russia’s top newspapers continued to push a link between the attack and Ukraine.

“What do the videos of the interrogations of the Crocus terrorists say? The trail leads to Ukraine,” the top-selling Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said in a headline.