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.
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