Russian media yesterday identified a man who allegedly opened fire near the headquarters of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in central Moscow, killing one person and wounding five, as a 39-year-old from a nearby town.
While there has been no official confirmation of the identity of the attacker shot by security forces after the exchange of fire on Thursday evening, Russian media named the man as a former security guard who practiced shooting as a hobby and lived in the town of Podolsk, about 40km south of Moscow.
Numerous channels on the Telegram messenger service published a photograph of the dead attacker, a bearded man in glasses with his face bloodied.
Komsomolskaya Pravda and Ren TV reported that the alleged attacker had an arsenal of seven guns that he owned legally, citing an investigator.
The FSB, a successor to the Russian Committee for State Security, commonly known as the KGB, has given little information on the lone gunman who was killed after the attack outside its notorious headquarters on Lubyanka Square close to a busy shopping area in the heart of the Russian capital.
The Russian Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said that one FSB officer was killed and five people, including a civilian, were being treated for injuries.
The attacker took part in marksmanship competitions, an instructor at his gun club, Oleg Solovich, told the newspaper, adding that he owned weapons legally, but “shot badly.”
The newspaper interviewed the mother of the man, who said that he had been a security guard, but had stopped working and “used to talk on the phone to some Arabs.”
She added that she did not understand their conversation in English.
The newspaper published a photograph of the modest five-story block where the alleged attacker lived as investigators carried out a search there.
The attack took place in the early evening as people were going home from work or sat in cafes.
Footage shot by passers-by showed people running in panic and witnesses told reporters that they took shelter in cafe back rooms as shots rang out.
The motives behind the shooting remained unclear.
It came on the eve of Russia’s Day of Security Service, which is celebrated on Dec. 20, and hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin held a marathon annual news conference in central Moscow.
Russia has in the past few years been hit by a spate of attacks blamed on Muslim extremists, often hailing from the restive northern Caucasus region.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS