The number of people wounded in Friday’s deadly concert hall attack has risen to 360, Russian state-run media reported on Wednesday, citing health officials.
Authorities previously said that more than 180 people were wounded in the mass shooting at Crocus City Hall, located just northwest of Moscow, which saw camouflaged gunmen indiscriminately kill at least 140 people.
Not all of the surviving victims immediately sought medical help after fleeing the venue, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova told reporters late Tuesday when asked why the number of wounded people has continued to climb nearly a week after the attack.
“We expect people to keep coming because many of them left and ran away in a state of shock,” Golikova said.
The TASS news agency, citing health officials, reported that 11 children were among the 360 wounded people. Ninety-two people were hospitalized, 63 were discharged and another 205 were provided outpatient care, it added.
Later on Wednesday, Russia’s Health Minister Mikhail Murashko announced that one more person had died in the hospital from wounds sustained during the shooting, bringing the overall death toll to 140.
Top Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have claimed that Ukraine and the West were partly responsible for last week’s attack, but they have yet to bring forward any concrete evidence to back up the claim.
Likewise, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Putin, has said publically that the suspected gunmen behind the mass killing had initially sought to flee to Belarus rather than Ukraine.
The Islamic State’s affiliate ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in Russia since the 2004 Beslan school siege, and social media channels linked to the militant group have published graphic videos of the gunmen committing the mass killing at Crocus City Hall.
So, too, has the United States insisted that the Islamic militant group was responsible for the attack, denying Russia’s claims that both it and Kyiv were somehow involved in the deadly shooting.
Russian authorities have detained 11 people in connection to Friday's attack, though the identities of only eight of the suspects are currently known.
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