a superyacht helped rescue 100 migrants

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Nearly 100 migrants rescued from a yacht off southwestern Greece

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ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Nearly 100 migrants were safely evacuated Wednesday from a yacht reported to be in difficulty off the southwestern coast of Greece, authorities said.

The coast guard said in a statement that the yacht carrying 93 people was located about 40 nautical miles (46 miles, 74 kilometers) west of the small town of Pylos. There were no reports of missing passengers.

Six of the people on board were picked up by another yacht in the area and taken to Pylos, where one woman was transferred to a hospital in the southern city of Kalamata.

Another 87 people were picked up by two passing tanker ships and transported to Kalamata escorted by coast guard patrol vessels, the statement said.

The area is near where a deadly migrant shipwreck in June left hundreds of people dead and missing and led to allegations that Greek authorities failed to respond appropriately to rescue the passengers.

The overcrowded trawler had set sail from Libya with an estimated 500-700 people on board. Only 104 survived and 82 bodies were recovered. The rest sank with the trawler in what is one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean.

Last week, 40 survivors filed a lawsuit in Greece against “all parties responsible,” saying Greek authorities failed to rescue the passengers before the vessel capsized.

Many of the survivors dispute the official account that repeated offers of assistance by the coast guard were rejected, and claim a botched effort was made to tow the vessel to safety shortly before it capsized and sank.

Greece lies on a route used by smugglers to ferry people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia into the European Union.

Many use small dinghies to head from Turkey to Greek islands near the Turkish coast, while others use larger sailing boats, yachts or fishing vessels to make the longer crossing from either Turkey or north Africa to Italy, bypassing Greece.

The Greek coast guard said that a total of 115 migrants were rescued from three small boats off the eastern Aegean Sea island of Lesbos on Wednesday, and another 24 people off the island of Samos.

Find more of AP’s migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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Nearly 100 migrants rescued off Greek coast

Yacht carrying 93 people came into difficulty near the small greek town of pylos.

A Greek coastguard vessel patrols the Eastern Mediterranean. EPA

About 100 migrants were rescued from a yacht reported to be in difficulty off the south-western coast of Greece on Wednesday, authorities said.

The yacht carrying 93 people was located about 40 nautical miles west of the small town of Pylos, the coastguard said in a statement.

There were no reports of missing passengers.

Six of the passengers were picked up by another yacht in the area and taken to Pylos, where one woman was transferred to hospital in the southern city of Kalamata.

Another 87 people were picked up by two passing tanker ships and transported to Kalamata, escorted by coastguard patrol vessels, the statement said.

The area is near where a deadly migrant shipwreck in June left hundreds of people dead and missing and led to allegations that Greek authorities had failed to respond appropriately to rescue the passengers.

The overcrowded trawler had set sail from Libya with an estimated 500-700 people on board.

Only 104 survived and 82 bodies were recovered.

The rest sank with the trawler in what is one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean.

About 100 migrants rescued after Greece shipwreck – in pictures

Survivors of the shipwreck outside a warehouse in the port at Kalamata. AP

Last week, 40 survivors filed a lawsuit in Greece against “all parties responsible”, saying Greek authorities failed to rescue passengers before the vessel capsized.

Many of the survivors dispute the official account that repeated offers of assistance by the coastguard were rejected, and claim a botched effort was made to tow the vessel to safety shortly before it capsized and sank.

Greece lies on a route used by smugglers to ferry people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East , Africa and Asia into the EU .

Many use small dinghies to head from Turkey to Greek islands near the Turkish coast, while others use larger sailing boats, yachts or fishing vessels to make the longer crossing from either Turkey or North Africa to Italy , bypassing Greece.

The Greek coastguard said that a total of 115 migrants were rescued from three small boats off the eastern Aegean Sea island of Lesbos on Wednesday, and another 24 people off the island of Samos.

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This $175 million superyacht belonging to one of Mexico’s richest families rushed to the rescue of migrants and saved around 100 of them who had fallen off of a fishing boat in the Mediterranean. The 305 feet long vessel sheltered and safely bought the migrants to the Greek coast.

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Nearly 100 Migrants Rescued From a Yacht off Southwestern Greece

Greek authorities say nearly 100 migrants have been evacuated from a yacht reported to be in difficulty off the southwestern coast of Greece

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Nearly 100 migrants were safely evacuated Wednesday from a yacht reported to be in difficulty off the southwestern coast of Greece, authorities said.

The coast guard said in a statement that the yacht carrying 93 people was located about 40 nautical miles (46 miles, 74 kilometers) west of the small town of Pylos. There were no reports of missing passengers.

Six of the people on board were picked up by another yacht in the area and taken to Pylos, where one woman was transferred to a hospital in the southern city of Kalamata.

Another 87 people were picked up by two passing tanker ships and transported to Kalamata escorted by coast guard patrol vessels, the statement said.

The area is near where a deadly migrant shipwreck in June left hundreds of people dead and missing and led to allegations that Greek authorities failed to respond appropriately to rescue the passengers.

The overcrowded trawler had set sail from Libya with an estimated 500-700 people on board. Only 104 survived and 82 bodies were recovered. The rest sank with the trawler in what is one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean.

Photos You Should See - April 2024

Last week, 40 survivors filed a lawsuit in Greece against “all parties responsible,” saying Greek authorities failed to rescue the passengers before the vessel capsized.

Many of the survivors dispute the official account that repeated offers of assistance by the coast guard were rejected, and claim a botched effort was made to tow the vessel to safety shortly before it capsized and sank.

Greece lies on a route used by smugglers to ferry people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia into the European Union.

Many use small dinghies to head from Turkey to Greek islands near the Turkish coast, while others use larger sailing boats, yachts or fishing vessels to make the longer crossing from either Turkey or north Africa to Italy, bypassing Greece.

The Greek coast guard said that a total of 115 migrants were rescued from three small boats off the eastern Aegean Sea island of Lesbos on Wednesday, and another 24 people off the island of Samos.

Find more of AP's migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

Copyright 2023 The  Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The superyacht millionaires who launched a migrant rescue mission

Malta-based Christopher and Regina Catrambrone were so moved by the plight of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, they set up their own aid organisation.

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Every year, tens of thousands of migrants risk their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean. Fleeing failed or fragile states and packed into overfilled boats, they seek a better life in Europe.

Many don’t make it, either drowning en-route or being turned back by coast guards under strict orders not to assist them. In 2021 alone, more than 17,600 migrants tried to reach Europe by sea, some 2,000 were left dead or missing.

Malta-based entrepreneurs Christopher and Regina Catrambone were so moved by the scale of the tragedy at sea - and the lack of help provided by the authorities - that they took they mounted their own response, investing $8 million to buy a ship, the Phoenix, outfit it and transport across the Atlantic to Europe.

The Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) launched in 2013, becoming the first non-governmental search and rescue operation in the central Mediterranean.

It completed its first mission in 2014, rescuing more than three thousand migrants over a period of just 90 days and over the next three years, MOAS would rescue over 35,000 more, working in partnership with a number of other aid organisations, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Regina Catrambone on the Phoenix following a rescue mission. Photo:Jason Florio/MOAS.

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Yachting World

• Digital Edition

Superyacht saves 16 in harrowing Caribbean migrant rescue

• Helen Fretter
• April 3, 2023

The captain and crew of a 121ft superyacht rescued 16 suspected migrants from the hull of an upturned fishing boat off St Kitts in the Caribbean

The captain and crew of a 121ft/37m sailing superyacht were central to a search and rescue last week which saw 16 people safely recovered from the hull of an upturned fishing boat, on the night of Tuesday 28 March.

The stricken fishing vessel is believed to have been carrying migrants from the island of Antigua to St Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands. Tragically a further 16 people are thought to have died in the incident.

Thomas Auckland, captain of SY Genevieve , shared the following detailed account of the search and rescue incident, and the procedures he and his crew used, with Yachting World .

SY Genevieve is a 121ft Ed Dubois-designed sloop launched in 1996.

Superyacht rescue

“At 23.30 on 27th March 2023, while motor-sailing from Antigua to Saint Maarten, approximately 16nm NE of Conaree, St Kitts, the lookout heard a faint noise that sounded like a woman’s scream. We immediately throttled back, and then both heard a clear audible scream. 

“[The lookout] at once mustered the crew, who donned lifejackets with PLBs and radios, as I furled the headsail, activated a DSC and called a Mayday. (In retrospect, this should have been a Mayday Relay).

“We then positioned four crew around the vessel with torches or searchlights to try to locate the woman or women. The First Mate was in charge of all radio comms and alarms from this muster until we found the capsized vessel.

Survivors reported that the fishing vessel was travelling from Antigua to the USVI when it capsized off St Kitts & Nevis. Map data ©2023 Google.

“Six minutes later we spotted some retro-reflective tape and discovered a man clinging on to part of a damaged life jacket. We used a small circular fender, attaching an additional buoyancy aid to aid grip, fastened to a rescue line to throw downwind at mid-ships. 

“We were able to pull him to the stern, where two crew members hauled him onboard from the folding swim platform. He was retrieved at 23:39. 

“While we had not compromised our safety, we had taken a considerable amount of water into the lazarette, and it was clear that this was not an ideal way to retrieve someone from the water in this sea state (roughly 2 metres & 20kts). By the time he reached the cockpit he was unconscious.

“We continued our search, knowing there was at least one more person, a woman, still in the water, but unable to ascertain if there were further persons at risk. 

“At 23:57 we spotted a woman clinging to a white plastic barrel, approximately 400m downwind of the first casualty. She was recovered in the same fashion, although it was much harder to get her out of the water: it took three of us to haul her onboard, and had she slipped under the swim platform I have no doubt she would have been knocked unconscious. 

“Once in the cockpit she informed us that she had been travelling on a small boat which had left Antigua, bound for St Thomas (USVI), with approximately 32 people onboard. The vessel had broken down, taken on water and capsized. 

“I discharged two red parachute flares at this point.

“With no knowledge of whether or not the vessel was still afloat, we decided to continue slowly downwind towards the brightest looms of St Kitts which would be visible from the water, assuming that if afloat it would have more windage than the casualties in the water. 

“At around 00:28, the crew started spotting plastic drums floating in the water, and shortly afterwards they noticed a light coming in and out of sight, which later proved to be the light of a mobile phone being waved around.”  

Survivors found on capsized boat

“On approach we discovered the upturned fishing skiff, La Belle Michelle with 15 persons straddled on the hull, approximately 1.1nm from the first casualty. 

“All the crew assembled on the aft deck, and together we quickly constructed a plan of how best to remove the individuals from the capsized vessel. This was a solid-hulled boat with two upturned outboards, so bringing it alongside in the given prevailing sea state was never a viable option. 

“We therefore used the floating line and fender attached to a long Dyneema tail, which was floated downwind to them; then the line was tied around the leg of one of the outboards by one of the casualties, under instruction from our crew.  We brought this to our starboard stern and on to a primary winch for control. This line was at once under several tonnes of load, so once it was affixed, we were very reluctant to move it. 

“We then used a rescue sling with a thick Dyneema tail for grip and additional safety line attached. This rescue sling proved invaluable. 

“Our plan was for the casualties to run themselves along the rope one by one, and once they reached the starboard quarter of the vessel, to transfer to the rescue sling, with which we would pull them to the midships and haul them clear of the water (we have a midships freeboard of just over 2 metres and discussed using a halyard at this stage, but we were rolling too violently for this to be safe or effective). 

SY Genevieve, pictured sailing on another occasion, was part of a major search and rescue operation off St Kitts in March 2023. Photos Alexis Andrews

“At this point all the crew were assigned new roles:

• Captain: throwing the rescue sling, communicating with casualties, removal from water at midships.
• Engineer: hauling casualties up side deck, communicating with casualties, removal from water at midships.
• First Mate: ensuring rescue line and safety were free to run, resetting the sling, removal from water at midships.
• Chef: ensuring rescue lines and safety were free to run, removing casualties from the water, then clearing the side deck.
• Stewardess: triage, assessing injuries, getting casualties into the cockpit, water, bedding etc.
• Deck/Stewardess: illumination, using the large spotlight to light the vessel and then the casualties as they came across.

“The casualties were at first clearly reluctant to entrust themselves to the rope. Only two of the persons were wearing life jackets (who turned out to be the drivers) and most of them were unable to swim.

“We later discovered that they were wearing all the clothes they owned, often three pairs of jeans, and over six upper layers each, which obviously made swimming very challenging. (Even though this made the casualties very heavy, this actually ended up proving helpful, as it gave us something to hold onto as we pulled them onboard).

“After three or four persons had been successfully retrieved, they needed much less encouragement to come across, and the process worked very well providing they left the vessel one at a time, as holding the “tow line” as it was under load was clearly very challenging. The teamwork displayed by the crew here was astounding, without them creating such an effective process of recovery, there is no way we would have got those 14 people off that hull.

“It became apparent that towards the end the casualties were becoming less and less physically able, and unfortunately the last casualty fell from the hull and was unable to make it along the line. We remained attached to the hull searching for the last individual until 01:57.”

Tragically the final casualty could not be found. Auckland confirmed that the 16 survivors that the Genevieve crew recovered were later transferred ashore with only minor injuries.

Sixteen people were rescued by the SY Genevieve, here recovering in the cockpit (identities protected). Photo: Thomas Auckland

Aboard SY Genevieve

Auckland continues: “Thereafter, I decided that marking the upturned hull with lights strapped to a lifejacket and cutting it loose was the best option, as I felt the situation was becoming hazardous. In hindsight, this was perhaps my biggest regret, as we had spare PLBs on board and should have affixed one, as this would have served as a helpful search marker for MV Britannia , who had just taken up the role of on-scene MRCC.

“Events now entered a new phase. I was clearly aware that we had 16 migrants on board, 13 of whom were male, of which we knew nothing other than the fact that they were willing to risk their lives being smuggled across to St Thomas. 

“So we locked down the exterior of the boat and placed the female members of crew up forward, with everyone in direct radio contact. All casualties had been given water, sugary drinks, food and blankets, and were grouped together in the cockpit. 

“The male crew members remained at the helm station, while I ran back and forth on the VOIP line with MRCC Fort du France, who requested that we remain at the scene until air support arrived. As there was evidently a security risk on board, at 03:42 we were given permission to depart the scene and headed directly to Basseterre in St Kitts, which was approximately 34nm away.”

It’s believed that the casualties included migrants from Cameroon. Following the introduction of charter flights between Nigeria and Antigua in November 2022, around 600 passengers from troubled West African countries are believed to have remained on the island of Antigua. 

Auckland continues: “Once the day dawned and we were under Coastguard escort, it became quite clear that these terrified Cameroonian nationals were extremely grateful to us and posed no risk to us at all. The female crew came and administered basic first aid; fed, watered and tried to dry out as much of their clothing as possible, before we arrived in Basseterre. 

“On arrival they were transferred via Coastguard boat, where I went ashore and made statements to the various authorities.”

Thomas Auckland, Captain of SY Genevieve. Photo: T Auckland

Captain’s reflections on the rescue

  “I think what I take away most from this is just how well the crew performed under immense pressure: they were all making very sensible and rational decisions in a situation in which they have had very little training. We of course were incredibly lucky to hear a scream in the dark over the wind, and also unbelievably lucky that we were able to save so many people.

“We have sat together with an industry professional and dissected the night’s events in great detail, and we are also discussing it very openly among ourselves. All of the crew, myself included, are still in a stage of processing all that occurred.  It is affecting everybody in a slightly different way, but knowing that there were 32 people on board, and only 16 survived is perhaps the hardest part for us all to comprehend. 

“I sincerely hope that none of you ever have to encounter such an event during your time at sea, but if you do I hope this account may be of some use. In conclusion, never underestimate the importance of good watch-keeping – and rest assured that the teamwork and professionalism exhibited by your crew will leave you feeling very, very proud.”

Auckland also expressed his thanks to MRCC Fort du France, MV Britannia , Marine Assist Osprey, SY Midnight , St Kitts Coastguard and other vessels which assisted in the operation.

The crew of SY Genevieve have also set up a JustGiving page to raise funds to helpp stranded Cameroonian Nationals in Antigua, with funds intended to help provide basic housing, sanitation and food for this community. “Unlike the night of March 28th, no more innocent people need to be lost on the ocean in search of a new life,” said Auckland.

The JustGiving link is https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/helpingcamerooniansinantigua?utm_term=zMD6K4y89

By SuperyachtNews 03 Apr 2023

S/Y Genevieve rescues 16 from capsized vessel in Caribbean

Captain thomas auckland of sy genevieve, explains in detail the sequence of events that resulted in the rescue of a group of 16 near st kitts….

The following account has been detailed by Captain Thomas Auckland, of the 37m S/Y Genevieve . Starting at 23:30 on 27th March, while motor-sailing from Antigua to Saint Maarten, approximately 16nm NE of Conaree, St Kitts, the lookout onboard heard a faint noise that sounded like a woman’s scream. The yacht was immediately throttled back, and then both the captain and lookout heard a clear audible scream.

Four crew were then positioned around the vessel with torches or searchlights, with the first mate in charge of all radio communications and alarms. Six minutes later retro-reflective tape was then discovered with one casualty in the water hanging on to a damaged lifejacket. The crew then used a small circular fender, attaching an additional buoyancy aid to aid grip, fastened to a rescue line to then throw downwind at mid-ships. The casualty was pulled to the stern, where he was retrieved via the swim platform at 23:39.

“While we had not compromised our safety,“ says Captain Auckland  “we had taken a considerable amount of water into the lazarette, and it was clear that this was not an ideal way to retrieve someone from the water in this sea state (roughly two meters & 20kts). By the time he reached the cockpit, he was unconscious. We continued our search, knowing there was at least one more person, a woman, still in the water, but unable to ascertain if there were further persons at risk.”

At 23:57 a woman was spotted clinging to a white plastic barrel, approximately 400m downwind of the first casualty. They were recovered in the same way, and once in the cockpit, she informed the crew that she had been travelling on a small boat which had left Antigua, bound for St Thomas (USVI) with approximately 32 people onboard before it broke down, took on water and capsized.

Captain Auckland discharged two red parachute flares at this point, and with no knowledge of whether or not the vessel in question was still afloat, the decision was made to continue slowly downwind, assuming that if afloat it would have more windage than the casualties in the water. 

At approximately 00:28 plastic drums were spotted floating in the water, as well as the light of a mobile phone, and eventually the upturned fishing skiff La Belle Michelle with 15 persons straddled on the hull approximately 1.1nm from the first casualty. Captain Auckland outlines the rescue plan, as they assessed the scene:

“All the crew assembled on the aft deck, and together we quickly constructed a plan of how best to remove the individuals from the capsized vessel. This was a solid-hulled boat with two upturned outboards, so bringing it alongside in the given prevailing sea state was never a viable option. We, therefore, used the floating line and fender attached to a long Dyneema tail, which was floated downwind to them; then the line was tied around the leg of one of the outboards by one of the casualties, under instruction from our crew.  

We brought this to our STB stern and onto a primary winch for control.  This line was at once under several tonnes of load, so once it was affixed, we were very reluctant to move it. We then used a rescue sling with a thick Dyneema tail for grip and an additional safety line attached. This rescue sling proved invaluable.”

According to Auckland, each casualty pulled themselves along the rope to the starboard quarter and transferred to the rescue sling, which the crew then used to pull them to midships and hauled clear of the water. Although using a halyard to clear the 2m freeboard was discussed, the roll was too severer for this to be a safe or viable option.

The on-scene roles were broken down as follows;

Captain: throwing the rescue sling, communicating with casualties, removal from water at midships.

Engineer: hauling casualties upside deck, communicating with casualties, removal from water at midships.

First Mate: ensuring rescue line and safety were free to run, resetting the sling, and removal from water at midships.

Chef: ensuring rescue lines and safety were free to run, removing casualties from the water, and then clearing the side deck.

Stewardess: triage, assessing injuries, getting casualties into the cockpit, water, bedding etc.

Deck/Stewardess: illumination, using the large spotlight to light the vessel and then the casualties as they came across.

“The casualties were at first clearly reluctant to entrust themselves to the rope,” says Captain Auckland. “Only two of the persons were wearing life jackets (who turned out to be the drivers) and most of them were unable to swim. We later discovered that they were wearing all the clothes they owned, often three pairs of jeans, and over six upper layers each, which obviously made swimming very challenging. (Even though this made the casualties very heavy, this ended up proving helpful, as it gave us something to hold onto as we pulled them on board).”

“After three or four persons had been successfully retrieved, they needed much less encouragement to come across, and the process worked very well providing they left the vessel one at a time, as holding the 'tow line' as it was under load was clearly very challenging. The teamwork displayed by the crew here was astounding, without them creating such an effective process of recovery, there is no way we would have got those 14 people off that hull.”

“It became apparent that towards the end the casualties were becoming less and less physically able, and unfortunately the last casualty fell from the hull and was unable to make it along the line. We remained attached to the hull searching for the last individual until 01:57. Thereafter, I decided that marking the upturned hull with lights strapped to a lifejacket and cutting it loose was the best option, as I felt the situation was becoming hazardous. In hindsight, this was perhaps my biggest regret, as we had spare PLBs on board and should have affixed one, as this would have served as a helpful search marker for MV Britannia, who had just taken up the role of on-scene MRCC.”

At 03:42 S/Y Genevieve was permitted to depart the scene, and it headed directly to Basseterre in St Kitts, approximately 34nm away. Upon arrival, the group of Cameroonian Nationals were transferred ashore via a coast guard vessel, and captain Auckland gave official statements.

“I think what I take away most from this is just how well the crew performed under immense pressure,” says Captain Auckland “They were all making very sensible and rational decisions in a situation in which they have had very little training. We of course were incredibly lucky to hear a scream in the dark over the wind, and also unbelievably lucky that we were able to save so many people.  

“We have sat together with an industry professional and dissected the night’s events in great detail, and we are also discussing it very openly among ourselves. All of the crew, myself included, are still in the stage of processing all that occurred.  It is affecting everybody in a slightly different way, but knowing that there were 32 people on board, and only 16 survived is perhaps the hardest part for us all to comprehend.

“I sincerely hope that none of you ever have to encounter such an event during your time at sea, but if you do I hope this account may be of some use. In conclusion, never underestimate the importance of good watch-keeping – and rest assured that the teamwork and professionalism exhibited by your crew will leave you feeling very, very proud.”

I would like to thank, MRCC Fort du France, MV Britannia, Marine Assist Osprey, SY Midnight, St Kitts Coastguard and the numerous other vessels, that came together so selflessly, it is an honour to sail the waters with you."

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Crew of migrant rescue boat acquitted in Italy after seven-year ordeal

Case of the Iuventa became a symbol of what activists say are growing attempts to criminalise refugee aid workers

• Europe live – latest updates

Judges in Sicily have acquitted all crew members of an NGO rescue boat who had been accused of aiding and abetting illegal migration, in a case seen by activists as a symbol of the criminalisation of those who have sought to help at-risk refugees and migrants at sea.

Friday’s verdict, after seven years of proceedings, followed a surprise turn of events in February when prosecutors in Trapani unexpectedly requested the charges be dropped owing to a lack of evidence.

The Iuventa, a rescue vessel operated by the German NGO Jugend Rettet, is believed to have saved 14,000 people during its time in the central Mediterranean. Its crews would find distressed vessels and pass those saved on to European military ships or the Italian coastguard.

In response to the large numbers of people being rescued and returned to its ports, and the lack of support from other EU member states, the Italian government struck a deal with the Libyan coastguard, which has close links to Libyan militias, under which the EU would fund it to find and return those in the Mediterranean to Libya.

The Iuventa was seized in August 2017 at a port on the Italian island of Lampedusa. It was claimed in official documents relating to the seizure of phones and computers that there was evidence the rescuers had collaborated with people-smugglers, an allegation that has been strenuously denied.

It later transpired that the crew had been bugged and that informants had been placed on other rescue ships. The Italian newspaper Domani revealed that magistrates in Trapani had secretly recorded reporters’ phone calls with rescuers and allegedly exposed the journalists’ sources. Italy’s justice minister in 2021 sent inspectors to Sicily after the reports.

Trapani prosecutors claim that the file containing the journalists’ wiretaps data was passed on to them by the former lead prosecutor and that they intend to ask a judge to destroy it .

After prosecutors unexpectedly admitted on 28 February that there was no basis for finding any wrongdoing on the defendants’ side, Francesca Cancellaro, one of the Iuventa lawyers, said the case should not have gone to trial in the first place.

“We are pleased with the prosecution’s change of mind after seven years,” she said. “However, this is not how a state of law operates. Charges should only be pressed after a thorough investigation and collection of all available evidence. Initiating a trial without proper groundwork is unjust and places undue burden on the defendants.”

The case of the Iuventa has become emblematic of what are claimed to be increasing attempts to criminalise refugee aid workers, and highlights the challenges encountered by those dedicated to safeguarding human rights.

Groups who assist asylum seekers are reporting a disturbing trend of escalating intimidation, with aid workers facing direct threats, including being held at gunpoint and having their phone communications monitored by government authorities.

The defendants said the investigation and trial meant the Iuventa had been forced to stop helping those in distress. Sascha Girke, one of the acquitted, said: “As a result of a flawed investigation driven by political motives, thousands of people have died in the Mediterranean or [been] forcibly returned to war-torn Libya. Meanwhile, our ship has been left to decay, and we have been entangled in year-long proceedings.

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“Additionally, it squandered immense resources, including state funds amounting to some €3m, in a bid to obstruct and defame civilian sea rescues. Our case serves as a glaring symbol of the strategies European governments are putting in place in order to prevent people from reaching safety, leading to and normalising the death of thousands of people.”

Dariush Beigui, another defendant, said that if the public prosecutor’s office had looked at the evidence from the start, “they would never have been allowed to seize the Iuventa and we would have been spared seven years of stress”.

As part of the case, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and other organisations were investigated for aiding and abetting illegal immigration.

Dr Christos Christou, the MSF international president, said: “These unfounded accusations have attempted to tarnish the work of humanitarian search and rescue teams for years. They were intended to remove vessels from the sea and to counter their efforts of saving lives and bearing witness. Now these accusations have collapsed.

“Our thoughts are with our colleagues from MSF and other organisations who have been living under the weight of accusations for legitimately doing their jobs: saving people in distress at sea, in full transparency and compliance with the laws.”

Tommaso Fabbri, a former MSF mission head who was involved in the case, said: “Saving lives is not a crime, it is a moral and legal obligation, a fundamental act of humanity that simply must be done.”

More on this story

Nine people including baby die after boat capsizes off Lampedusa

Italian court jails people smuggler over shipwreck that killed at least 94 migrants

African Union Commission calls for ‘paradigm shift’ at Italy-Africa summit

People smugglers recruiting skippers from central Asia on Turkey to Italy route

Italy tests 180 migrants rescued by ship for Covid-19

Sicily launches inquiry into fire in 'migrant boats graveyard'

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A superyacht saved 100 migrants thrown into the sea

2023-06-22T12:15:46.226Z

Highlights: A $175 million vessel responded to a distress call and helped rescue survivors in one of the Mediterranean's worst shipwrecks in decades. The world's waterways have become in recent days a reflection of global inequalities. Superyachts of the super-rich, equipped with swimming pools, hot tubs, helipads and other luxury trappings, share the seas with the most destitute in boats operated by smugglers that cross dangerously from North Africa to Europe. "As soon as they warn you and you're close and you can do it, you're obliged" to attempt the rescue, an expert says.

A $175 million vessel responded to a distress call and helped rescue survivors in one of the Mediterranean's worst shipwrecks in decades, reflecting the new inequality of the seas.

SOUDA, Greece – The superyacht Mayan Queen IV was sailing smoothly in clear weather across the dark and tranquil Mediterranean in the early hours of June 14 when it received a call about a boat of migrants in distress 4 nautical miles away.

About 20 minutes later, shortly before 3 a.m., the imposing $175 million yacht, owned by the family of a Mexican silver tycoon, arrived at the scene.

The ship had already sunk.

The Mayan Queen IV seen in the port of Souda, Greece, on Wednesday. photo. Jason Horowitz/The New York Times

The four crew members could only see the lights of a Greek coast guard vessel scanning the surface of the water.

But they could hear the screams of the survivors.

"Horrible," said the captain of the Mayan Queen, Richard Kirkby, who described the sea as "black as coal" on that almost moonless night.

Within hours, the 93-meter-long Mayan Queen, more accustomed to sailing for pleasure to Monaco and Italy with billionaires and their friends on board, was filled with 100 desperate, dehydrated and sea-soaked Pakistani, Syrian, Palestinian and Egyptian men as they played an unexpected role in one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks in decades.

Migrants preparing to disembark from the Mayan Queen IV in Kalamata. The Greek Coast Guard asked the yacht's crew to help rescue the people and bring them to port. Photo Eurokinissi/via Reuters

Up to 650 men, women and children drowned.

The incongruous image of devastated survivors disembarking from the Mayan Queen in a port in Kalamata, Greece, last week underscored what has become the strange reality of the modern Mediterranean, where superyachts of the super-rich, equipped with swimming pools, hot tubs, helipads and other luxury trappings, share the seas with the most destitute in boats operated by smugglers that cross dangerously from North Africa to Europe.

Cousins Imran Wazir, 23, left, and Abdul Salam, 25, who relatives said were among more than 100 Pakistanis who died when an overloaded fishing boat capsized in the Mediterranean in June 2023. (Abid Rajorvi via The New York Times)

The world's waterways have become in recent days a reflection of global inequalities.

In the North Atlantic, a billionaire, his son and other businessmen were exploring the wreckage of the Titanic in a missing luxury tourist submersible, triggering an international search and rescue operation.

Days earlier, Greek authorities repeatedly decided not to rescue a 24- to 30-meter-long fishing boat packed with up to 750 people fleeing desperate poverty and displacement from war in Greece's search and rescue zone.

Only when the ship sank off the coast guard did authorities spring into action, calling in the Mayan Queen, one of the 100 largest yachts in the world.

"As soon as they warn you and you're close and you can do it, you're obliged" to attempt the rescue, said Aphrodite Papachristodoulou , an expert on the law of the sea and human rights at the Irish Centre for Human Rights.

He said it was not unusual for luxury yachts to be in the area.

The reason Greek authorities needed to call a passing yacht to come to the rescue of an overcrowded and rickety boat they had been guarding and communicating with in their search and rescue zone for an entire day, he said, was less obvious.

"The practice of non-attendance or delay of assistance and why the Greeks did not proceed to the rescue is another question," he said.

When the Mayan Queen arrived, there was already a Greek coastguard ship on site, and its sailors were on a raft saving dozens of men from the water.

The crew of the Mayan Queen lowered its life raft with three of its crew and followed the cries for help, bringing 15 men aboard, the captain said.

A vivid account of the events sworn by Kirkby and obtained by The New York Times added that none of those saved were wearing life jackets.

Some clung to floating pieces of wood.

For the next few hours, the yacht's crew kept an eerie silence and turned on its brightest lights to hear and see better.

Investigators are still trying to understand what exactly happened when the fishing boat sank trying to reach Italy:

Whether smugglers refused to lend aid and panic on the ship caused it to capsize, as the coast guard claims, or whether a failed attempt to tow the ship caused it to sink, as some survivors contend.

In any case, it was up to the Mayan Queen to assume much of the rescue.

People queue for food aid in Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 15, 2023. (Saiyna Bashir/The New York Times)

The gleaming yacht, from Italy, carried 100 of the 104 survivors and four Greek coastguards, as well as a dozen bodies.

"I'd like to think we did what anyone would do," said Kirkby, who used to pilot the superyacht Le Grand Bleu.

He added Wednesday that, due to a confidentiality agreement and the "controversial" circumstances of the ship's sinking, he could not say much more.

"I wouldn't want the coast guard to come out badly," he said.

"They did everything they could."

Kirkby spoke briefly at a café in the port of Souda, Greece, where the yacht was docked near a cruise ship carrying tourists to the Cretan city of Chania, a Russian industrial vessel and a parking lot full of containers of stopped trucks.

The ship's crew performed household chores and, like the captain, wore T-shirts with a drawing of the yacht on the back and a B, from the family of the ship's late owner, Alberto Baillères , in their chest pocket.

On Wednesday morning, a crew member carried an umbrella along the walkway down the migrants last week, some of whom were greeted by stretchers and medical staff with tinfoil blankets.

At the stern of the ship, with the silver letters of "Mayan Queen" and "George Town" twinkling in the scorching sun and house music blaring, crew members worked where migrants huddled upon arrival at Kalamata port.

According to Boat International, a yacht news site, the Mayan Queen, which flies the flag of the Cayman Islands, is among the 100 largest superyachts in the world.

It was built in 2008 by Hamburg-based shipyard Blohm & Voss GmbH and designed by Tim Heywood, a darling of the boating world.

"Its power comes from two diesel engines. It accommodates 26 guests and 24 crew," the magazine wrote.

"It is built with teak deck, steel hull and aluminum superstructure."

The craftsmanship contrasted with the state of the boat in which hundreds of migrants, paying thousands of dollars a head, were crammed into Libya last week, hoping to reach Italy.

Witnesses testified in affidavits obtained by the Times that passengers suffered beatings with belts and deprivation.

Smugglers threw food into the water.

The Pakistanis were held in the hold, and hundreds of them sank with women and children in one of the deepest areas of the Mediterranean.

Only the lucky ones made it to the decks of the Mayan Queen.

Around 6 a.m. from the sinking, as the sun rose, Kirkby received a call to transport the 100 men rescued from the coast guard ship to the nearest port.

He offered dry clothes and water to the men, some of whom, he said, "were very unwell."

For hours, the survivors, wrapped in gray blankets and mourning their losses, sailed on the superyacht.

At 11.20 a.m., the Mayan Queen and her unexpected passengers arrived in port.

"We took them all," Kirkby said.

Drama in the Mediterranean: a boat with refugees sank and there are almost 80 dead

"may the waters of the mediterranean no longer be filled with blood", pope francis' harsh message against human trafficking.

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-06-22

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Russia agrees ‘in principle’ to UN and Red Cross involvement in evacuations from Mariupol

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Russia has agreed “in principle” to UN involvement in the evacuation of citizens from the last remaining holdout in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, following a meeting between Secretary-General António Guterres and President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.

The UN chief, who was in the Russian capital for talks on the war in Ukraine, also met with the country’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov.

During his “tête-a-tête meeting” with President Putin, Mr. Guterres reiterated the UN’s position on Ukraine, according to a readout issued by his Spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric.

In Moscow, Secretary-General @antonioguterres met with Russian president Vladimir Putin and reiterated the UN’s position on Ukraine. They discussed proposals for humanitarian assistance & evacuation of civilians from conflict zones. Full readout: https://t.co/GqlxzmGYCT pic.twitter.com/trlqMwZsNX UN Spokesperson UN_Spokesperson

They also discussed proposals for humanitarian assistance and evacuation of civilians from conflict zones , namely in relation to the situation in the besieged port city of Mariupol, where thousands of civilians and Ukrainian troops remain holed up in the Azovstal steel mill.

“ The President agreed, in principle, to the involvement of the United Nations and the International Committee for the Red Cross in the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal plant in Mariupol ”, said Mr. Dujarric.

He added that follow-on discussions will be held with the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA , and the Russian Defence Ministry. 

‘Frank discussion’

Mr. Guterres told reporters that he had held “a very frank discussion” with Mr. Lavrov “and it is clear that there are two different positions on what is happening in Ukraine.”

Russia has said it is conducting a “special military operation” in Ukraine, while for the UN, the 24 February invasion is a violation of the country’s territorial integrity and goes against the UN Charter .

“But it is my deep conviction that the sooner we end this war, the better – for the people of Ukraine, for the people of the Russian Federation, and those far beyond,” he said.

Underlining his role as a “messenger of peace”, the Secretary-General recalled that the UN has repeatedly appealed for ceasefires to protect civilians, as well as political dialogue towards a solution, which so far has not happened.

Referring to the “violent battle” underway across the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, he noted that many civilians are being killed, and hundreds of thousands are trapped by the conflict, adding that repeated reports of violations, as well as possible war crimes, will require independent investigation for effective accountability.

Humanitarian corridors

“We urgently need humanitarian corridors that are truly safe and effective and that are respected by all to evacuate civilians and deliver much-needed assistance.”

The Secretary-General has proposed establishment of a Humanitarian Contact Group - comprising Russia, Ukraine and the UN - “to look for opportunities for the opening of safe corridors, with local cessations of hostilities, and to guarantee that they are actually effective. “ 

Addressing the “crisis within a crisis” in Mariupol, where thousands are in dire need of life-saving assistance, and for many, evacuation, he underlined the UN’s readiness to fully mobilize its human and logistical resources to help save lives.

Mr. Guterres has proposed that the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Ukrainian and Russian forces, coordinate work to both enable the safe evacuation of civilians who want to leave Mariupol – both inside the last redoubt of the Azovstal steel plant, and in the city itself, and in any direction they choose – and to deliver humanitarian aid.

Global shock waves

Turning to the wider impacts of the war, the Secretary-General spoke of some of the “shock waves” being felt across the globe , such as the “dramatic acceleration” in food and energy costs, which particularly are affecting millions of the world’s most vulnerable people.

“This comes on top of the shock of the continued COVID-19 pandemic and uneven access to resources for recovery, that particularly penalize developing countries around the world.  So, the sooner peace is established, the better – for the sake of Ukraine, Russia, and for the world,” he said.  

“And it’s very important, even in this moment of difficulty, to keep alive the values of multilateralism,” he added.

The Secretary-General underlined the need for a world that is “multipolar”, that abides by the UN Charter and international law, and which recognizes full equality among States, in hopes that humanity will again unite to address common challenges such as climate change “and in which the only war we should have would be a war of those that put the planet at risk. 

The Secretary-General will be in Ukraine on Thursday where he will have a working meeting with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, and he will be received by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Security Questions Emerge as First Charges Are Filed in Russia Attack

Russian officials formally charged four men in the attack, which killed at least 137 people at a Moscow-area concert hall on Friday. American officials blamed a branch of the Islamic State.

• Share full article

• A memorial outside the Crocus City Hall concert venue. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
• People waiting to visit a memorial at Crocus City Hall. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
• Leaving flowers outside the site of the attack. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• Mourners at a memorial in St. Petersburg, Russia. Anton Vaganov/Reuters
• Firefighters and rescuers clearing debris after the deadly attack. Reuters
• Police officers outside the Basmanny District Court in Moscow. Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press
• People waited to donate blood near Crocus City Hall on Saturday. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• A flag flying at half-staff as policemen guard the closed entrance to Red Square in Moscow. Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA, via Shutterstock
• A billboard on Saturday noted the date of the concert hall attack in Moscow. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• The Crocus City Hall concert venue in suburban Moscow after it was attacked Friday night. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

Paul Sonne and Neil MacFarquhar

Here’s what to know about the attack.

Russian officials have brought charges against four men they said were responsible for a fiery terrorist attack on a suburban Moscow concert venue that killed at least 137 people last week.

Four men were arraigned late Sunday night on terrorism charges in the attack at Crocus City Hall, just outside the Russian capital. A court spokesman identified them as Dalerjon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Fayzov, a 19-year-old who appeared in court in a wheelchair, according to Russian media outlets.

Mr. Mirzoyev, Mr. Rachabalizoda and Mr. Fariduni told the court they were from Tajikistan, and Russian media outlets reported that Mr. Fayzov was also from the Central Asian nation. All four had visible injuries; Mr. Rachabalizoda’s head was heavily bandaged and Mr. Fayzov had to be wheeled in and out of the courtroom.

Earlier Sunday — which had been declared a national day of mourning — people visited the scene of the attack to lay flowers and light candles at a memorial. Scores of people waited in a long line under a gray sky, many clutching red bouquets, as efforts were underway inside to dismantle the remains of the stage. Flags were lowered to half-staff at buildings across the country, and state media released a video of President Vladimir V. Putin lighting a memorial candle in a church.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law-enforcement body, said on Sunday that 137 bodies had been recovered from the charred premises, including those of three children. It said that 62 victims had been identified so far and that genetic testing was underway to identify the rest.

There are two primary narratives about the violence on Friday night, Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years . American officials say it was the work of Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, an Islamic State offshoot that has been active in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran . But on Saturday, Mr. Putin did not mention ISIS in his first public remarks on the tragedy , and hinted at the possible involvement of Ukraine, which has issued a strong denial .

Here’s what to know:

The search for survivors ended on Saturday, as details about the victims began to emerge . Many of the more than 100 people wounded in the attack were in critical condition. The search for bodies continues.

As Russia mourned, the war in Ukraine continued. Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 43 out of 57 Russian missiles and drones launched overnight against different parts of the country. And Ukraine’s military said it had struck two large landing ships that were part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. There was no immediate comment from Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Piknik, the Russian rock band that was to play a sold-out concert at the suburban venue on the night it was attacked and burned to rubble, now finds itself at the center of the tragedy .

The attack dealt a political blow to Mr. Putin , a leader for whom national security is paramount.

Neil MacFarquhar

Russia charges four people with terrorism after attack on concert hall.

The four men suspected of carrying out a bloody attack on a concert hall near Moscow, killing at least 137 people, were arraigned in a district court late Sunday and charged with committing a terrorist act.

The four, who were from Tajikistan but worked as migrant laborers in Russia, were remanded in custody until May 22, according to state and independent media outlets reporting from the proceedings, at Basmanny District Court. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The press service of the court only announced that the first two defendants, Dalerjon B. Mirzoyev and Saidakrami M. Rachalbalizoda, pleaded guilty to the charges. It did not specify any plea from the other two, Mediazona, an independent news outlet, reported.

The men looked severely battered and injured as each of them was brought into the courtroom separately. Videos of them being tortured and beaten while under interrogation circulated widely on Russian social media.

Muhammadsobir Z. Fayzov, a 19-year-old barber and the youngest of the men charged, was rolled into the courtroom from a hospital emergency room on a tall, orange wheelchair, attended by a doctor, the reports said. He sat propped up in the wheelchair inside the glass cage for defendants, wearing a catheter and an open hospital gown with his chest partially exposed. Often speaking in Tajik through a translator, he answered questions about his biography quietly and stammered, according to Mediazona.

Mr. Rachabalizoda, 30, had a large bandage hanging off the right side of his head where interrogators had sliced off a part of his ear and forced it into his mouth, the reports said, with the cutting captured in a video that spread online.

The judge allowed the press to witness only parts of the hearings, citing concerns that sensitive details about the investigation might be revealed or the lives of court workers put at risk. It is not an unusual ruling in Russia.

Russia’s Federal Security Services announced on Saturday that 11 people had been detained, including the four charged men, who were arrested after the car they were fleeing in was intercepted by the authorities 230 miles southwest of Moscow.

In the attack, on Friday night, four gunmen opened fire inside the hall just as a rock concert by the group Piknik was due to start. They also set off explosive devices that ignited the building and eventually caused its roof to collapse. Aside from the dead, there were 182 injured, and more than 100 remain hospitalized, according to the regional health ministry.

President Vladimir V. Putin used the fact that the highway where the men were detained leads to Ukraine to suggest that the attack was somehow linked to Ukraine’s war effort. But the United States has said repeatedly that the attack was the work of an extremist jihadi organization, the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility.

The first charged, Mr. Mirzoyev, who had a black eye and cuts and bruises all over his face, leaned for support against the glass wall of the court cage as the charge against him was read. Mr. Mirzoyev, 32, has four children and had a temporary residence permit in the southern Siberian city of Novosibirsk, but it had expired, the reports said.

Mr. Rachabalizoda, married with a child, said he was legally registered in Russia but did not remember where.

The fourth man charged, Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, married with an 8-month-old baby, worked in a factory producing parquet in the Russian city of Podolsk, just southwest of Moscow. He had also worked as a handyman in Krasnogorsk, the Moscow suburb where the attack took place at Crocus City Hall, at a concert venue within a sprawling shopping complex just outside the Moscow city limits.

The Islamic State has been able to recruit hundreds of adherents among migrant laborers from Central Asia in Russia who are often angry about the discrimination they frequently face.

Alina Lobzina , Paul Sonne and Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.

Maps and Diagrams of the Moscow Concert Hall Attack

The mass shooting and arson at a suburban Moscow concert venue, which killed more than 130, were attributed by U.S. officials to members of a branch of the Islamic State.

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The other two men charged in the attack are Shamsidin Fariduni, 26, and 19-year-old Muhammadsobir Fayzov, who appeared in court in a wheelchair. All four men who've been charged have been identified by a court spokesman on Telegram. They appeared separately before a judge on charges of committing a terrorist act and were remanded in custody until May 22.

Russian authorities have begun naming the suspects in the attack. The first two suspects have been identified as Dalerjon Mirzoyev and Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, according to state news agency RIA Novosti, which is reporting from the court. Both have been charged with committing a terrorist act and face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

RIA reported that Mirzoyev is a 32-year-old from Tajikistan who had an expired three-month permit to be in the southern Russian city of Novosibirsk. Less information was immediately released about Rachabalizoda, but state media reports said he was born in 1994.

Valerie Hopkins and Alina Lobzina

Concertgoers describe screams, smoke and stares of shock in a night of horror.

Once they heard the shots ring out on Friday night at Crocus City Hall, Efim Fidrya and his wife ran down to the building’s basement and hid with three others in a bathroom.

They listened as the gunfire began and thousands of people who had come to a sold-out rock concert on Moscow’s outskirts began screaming and trying to flee.

Horrified and scared, Mr. Fidrya did the only thing he could think to do: He held on tight to the bathroom door, which didn’t lock, trying to protect the group in case the assailants came to find them.

“While we could hear shooting and screaming, I stood the whole time holding the bathroom door shut,” Mr. Fidrya, an academic, said in a phone interview from Moscow. “The others were standing in the corner so that if someone started shooting through the door, they wouldn’t be in the line of fire.”

They didn’t know it then, but they were sheltering from what became Russia’s deadliest terror attack in two decades, after four gunmen had entered the popular concert venue and began shooting rapid-fire weapons.

Their story is one of many harrowing accounts that have emerged in the days since the attack, which killed at least 137 people. More than 100 injured people are hospitalized, some in critical condition, health officials said.

Mr. Fidrya’s small group waited and waited, but the attackers had started a fire in the complex and it was spreading. Mr. Fidrya’s wife, Olga, showed everyone how to wet their T-shirts and hold them to their faces so they could breathe without inhaling toxic smoke.

And then a second round of shots rang out.

After about half an hour, it was so smoky that Mr. Fidrya, 42, thought even the assailants must have left. As he ventured out, he saw the body of a dead woman lying by the escalator. Later he saw the body of another woman who had been killed in the carnage, her distraught husband standing over her.

His group went down into the parking garage and eventually emerged on the street as the emergency service workers were carrying victims from the building.

The Islamic State, through its news agency, claimed responsibility for the attack. U.S. officials said the assailants were believed to be part of ISIS-K, an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan. On Saturday, Russia’s Federal Security Services announced that 11 people had been detained, including four who were arrested after the car they were fleeing in was intercepted by authorities 230 miles southwest of Moscow.

In interviews, survivors described how what started as a typical Friday night out devolved into a scene of panic and terror. The venue, which seated 6,200 people, had been sold out for a show by a veteran Russian band called Piknik.

Video footage from the scene shows the assailants shooting at the entrance to the concert venue, part of a sprawling, upscale complex of buildings that also includes a shopping mall and multiple exhibition halls. They then moved into the concert hall, where they sprayed gunfire as well, videos show.

The attackers also set the building on fire using a combination of explosives and flammable liquid, Russian authorities said.

Like the Fidryas, Tatyana Farafontova initially thought the sound of the shooting was part of the show.

“Five minutes before the show was supposed to start, we heard these dull claps,” she wrote on her VK social media page. Ms. Farafontova, 38, said in a direct message on Saturday that she was still in shock and was slurring her speech after the attack.

Then the claps got closer and someone shouted that there were attackers shooting. She scrambled onto the stage with the assistance of her husband.

“At the moment when we climbed onto the stage, three people entered the hall with machine guns,” she wrote in her VK account. “They shot at everything that moved. My husband from the stage saw bluish smoke filling the hall.”

Ms. Farafontova said that being on the center of the stage made her feel exposed and targeted.

“It felt as if they were poking me in the back with the muzzle of a machine gun,” she wrote, adding, “I could feel the breath of death right behind my shoulders.”

She crawled under the curtain and eventually followed the musicians, who had already started to flee, and ran as far as she could from the building.

Up on the balcony, Aleksandr Pyankov and his wife, Anna, heard the gunshots and lay on the floor for some time before joining others who jumped up and began running to the exit.

As they fled, they encountered a woman who had slumped down on an escalator and was blocking their route. She was alive but staring blankly ahead, Mr. Pyankov, a publishing executive, said. He told her to keep running, but then turned his head and saw what she was staring at.

“I started to look,” Mr. Pyankov, 51, said in a telephone interview. “And first I saw a murdered woman sitting on the sofa, and there was a young man lying next to her. I looked around and there were groups of bodies.”

It all happened in a matter of seconds, he said, and he tried to keep fleeing.

“The worst thing is that in this situation you’re not running away from the shooting, but toward it,” he said. “Because it was already clear that there would be a fire there, we know how it would burn. And you’re just running to figure out where else to run.”

Anastasiya Volkova lost both her parents in the attack. She told 5 TV, a state channel, that she had missed a call from her mother on Friday night at around the time of the assault. When she called back, there was no response, Ms. Volkova said.

“I couldn’t answer the phone. I didn’t hear the call,” Ms. Volkova told the broadcaster, adding that her mother had been “really looking forward to this concert.”

Accounts emerging about others who died in the assault also told tales of eager concertgoers who had made special efforts to get to the show.

Irina Okisheva and her husband, Pavel Okishev, traveled hundreds of miles — making their way from Kirov, northeast of Moscow. Mr. Okishev had received the tickets as an early birthday present, the newspaper Komsomolsaya Pravda reported. He did not live to celebrate his 35th birthday, which is this week. Both he and his wife died in the attack.

And Alexander Baklemyshev, 51, had long dreamed about seeing Piknik , a heritage rock band that was playing the first of two sold-out concerts accompanied by a symphony orchestra.

Mr. Baklemyshev’s son told local media that his father had traveled solo from his hometown of Satka, some 1,000 miles east of Moscow, for the concert.

His son, Maksim, told the Russian news outlet MSK1 that his father had sent him a video of the concert hall before the attack. That was the last he had heard from him.

“There was no last conversation,” his son said. “All that was left is the video, and nothing more.”

Mr. Fidrya said he felt grateful to be alive, and that four of the assailants had been captured.

“Now there is confidence that the crime will be solved and those non-humans who organized and carried it out will be punished,” he said. “This really helps a lot.”

But images of the victims remain seared in his memory, in particular that of the husband, his back burned from the fire, standing over his dead wife outside the building as medics attended to the wounded.

The man was talking to Mr. Fidrya’s wife, Olga, saying they were from the city of Tver northwest of Moscow, had been together for 12 years and had three children.

“For us it’s all over, by and large,” Mr. Fidrya wrote in a message after the phone interview. “But for that guy who stood over the body of his wife, and for their three children, the worst is yet to come. And there are so many people like him there.”

Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement agency, released video of suspects being led, blindfolded, into its headquarters on Sunday. The agency said the investigation at the scene of the attack was continuing.

Ivan Nechepurenko

As questions about security failures swirl, Russian state media focus on a different narrative.

As Russia mourned the victims of the worst terrorist attack in the Moscow area in more than two decades on Sunday, differing narratives about the attack were spreading and taking hold in the country.

The attack late Friday on a concert hall near Moscow left at least 137 people dead and represented a significant security failure for the Kremlin. While the Russian authorities said they had arrested the four attackers, speculation over their identities and motivations was widespread. There also were open questions about whether Russia had adequately followed up on a warning from the United States about the threat of such an attack, and about how specific that warning was.

But most Russian commentators and state media devoted little time to those issues, instead pointing fingers elsewhere. The reaction reflected in part the state of anxiety that Russia has been living in since the start of the war in Ukraine, with propaganda outlets competing to advance one narrative, conspiracy theory or bit of speculation after another.

Many nationalist commentators and ultraconservative hawks on Sunday continued to push the idea that Ukraine was the obvious culprit, despite a claim of responsibility and mounting evidence that a branch of the Islamic State was responsible.

Hard-line anti-Kremlin activists speaking from abroad, meanwhile, speculated that the Russian state could have orchestrated the attack so that it could blame Ukraine or further tighten the screws inside the country.

Some lawmakers in Parliament argued that the government needed to get tough on migrants, after the authorities said that the four assailants were foreign citizens. Lawmakers also pledged to discuss whether capital punishment should be introduced in Russia.

“Different political forces are starting to use” the attack, said Aleksei Venediktov, a Russian journalist and commentator and the former editor of the influential Ekho Moskvy radio station. “The Kremlin, most of all,” he said in an interview broadcast on YouTube. “But others too, who say that it was all organized by the Kremlin.”

Some nationalist activists said that such a sense of disorientation could have been the attackers’ ultimate goal.

Yegor S. Kholmogorov, a Russian nationalist commentator, wrote in his blog on the Telegram messaging app that Russian society was “strongly united by the war and President Vladimir V. Putin’s victory in the election” before the attack.

But after the tragedy, he lamented on Sunday, Russia had turned into a “society that is split.”

Mr. Putin has done little to clear things up. On Saturday, he vowed to inflict “fair and inevitable” punishment on both the terrorists and the unknown forces behind them. Mr. Putin hinted that Ukraine was tied to the tragedy but stopped short of directly laying blame.

But many of Mr. Putin’s subordinates and public supporters appeared to have made up their minds about who was responsible.

Sergei A. Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst who often appears on Russian state television, wrote in a post on Telegram that Russia must work at isolating the Ukrainian leadership by “connecting the terrorist act not with ISIS, but with the Ukrainian government as much as possible.”

Russian state news outlets barely mentioned the claim of responsibility made by ISIS. United States officials have said the atrocity was the work of Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, an offshoot of the group that has been active in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Maria V. Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on Sunday that the West was pointing at ISIS in order to shift the blame away from Ukraine.

Russia has not presented any evidence of Ukraine’s involvement in the attack. Ukrainian officials have ridiculed the Russian accusations, and U.S. officials also have said there is no indication Kyiv played any role.

“There is no, whatsoever, any evidence — and, in fact, what we know to be the case is that ISIS-K is actually by all accounts responsible for what happened,” Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday when asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether the United States had evidence that Ukraine was connected to the concert hall attack.

Some commentators did criticize Russian security services for failing to prevent the tragedy. On Saturday, the state news agency Tass reported , citing a source in the Russian special services, that they had received a warning from the United States but that it was “broad, without any concrete information.”

Maggie Astor

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether the United States had any evidence to back up Vladimir Putin’s hints that Ukraine was connected to the concert hall attack. “No,” she said. “There is no, whatsoever, any evidence — and, in fact, what we know to be the case is that ISIS-K is actually by all accounts responsible for what happened.”

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement agency, said 137 bodies have been recovered from the site of the attack, including those of three children. It said 62 victims had been identified and that genetic testing was being carried out on the remaining bodies to establish identities.

Jason Horowitz

Pope Francis offered prayers today “to the victims of the vile terrorist attack carried out the other night in Moscow,” telling the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome for Palm Sunday Mass that he hoped God would comfort and bring peace to their families and “convert the hearts of those who plan, organize and implement these unhuman acts.’”

He also prayed for all those suffering because of war: “Especially I think of martyred Ukraine, where many people find themselves without electricity because of the intense attacks against infrastructure, which, beyond causing death and suffering, bring about the risk of a human catastrophe of even greater dimensions."

Search and rescue workers are dismantling the remains of the stage at Crocus City Hall so that a giant crane can be brought in to clear debris from the collapse of the roof, the regional governor, Andrei Vorobyov, said on Telegram. Late last night, he said 133 bodies had been recovered from the scene of the attack, of which 50 have been identified. Another 107 injured people were in area hospitals, he said.

Matthew Mpoke Bigg

As the investigation into the Moscow attack continues, the war in Ukraine carries on. Ukraine's air force said it had shot down 43 out of 57 Russian missiles and drones launched overnight against different parts of the country. And Ukraine’s military said it had struck two large landing ships that were part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. There was no immediate comment from Russia's defense ministry.

Crocus International, the company that owns the concert hall, vowed in a statement to restore everything that was destroyed during the terrorist attack. The cost of restoring the concert hall, one of the biggest and best-equipped in Moscow, will likely exceed $100 million, real estate experts told RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.

The complex was developed by the Azerbaijan-born billionaire Aras Agalarov, whose son, Emin, is a famous pop star. Former President Donald Trump held the Miss Universe pageant at the same complex in 2013, and world-famous performers like Eric Clapton, Dua Lipa and Sia have also performed there.

Sunday is a national day of mourning in Russia. The state media is airing footage of flags flying at half-staff on government buildings and foreign embassies, and of people bringing flowers, candles and toys to spontaneous memorials across the country.

Alex Marshall

Piknik, a longtime Russian rock band, is now at the center of a tragedy.

Early Saturday, Piknik, one of Russia’s most popular heritage rock bands, published a message to its page on Vkontakte , one of the country’s largest social media sites: “We are deeply shocked by this terrible tragedy and mourn with you.”

The night before, the band was scheduled to play the first of two sold-out concerts, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, at Crocus City Hall in suburban Moscow. But before Piknik took the stage, four gunmen entered the vast venue, opened fire and murdered at least 133 people .

The victims appear to have included some of Piknik’s own team. On Saturday evening, another note appeared on the band’s Vkontakte page to say that the woman who ran the band’s merchandise stalls was missing.

“We are not ready to believe the worst,” the message said .

The attack at Crocus City Hall has brought renewed attention to Piknik, a band that has provided the soundtrack to the lives of many Russian rock fans for over four decades.

Ilya Kukulin, a cultural historian at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said in an interview that Piknik was one of the Soviet Union’s “monsters of rock,” with songs inspired by classic Western rock acts including David Bowie and a range of Russian styles.

Since releasing its debut album, 1982’s “Smoke,” Piknik — led by Edmund Shklyarsky, the band’s singer and guitarist — has grown in popularity despite its music being often gloomy with gothic lyrics. Kukulin attributed this partly to the group’s inventive stage shows.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kukulin said, the band began performing with exciting light displays, special effects and other innovative touches. At one point in the 1990s, the band’s concerts included a “living cello” — a woman with an amplified string stretched across her. Shklyarsky would play a solo on the string.

This month, the band debuted a new song online — “ Nothing, Fear Nothing ” — with a video that showed the band performing live before huge screens featuring ever-changing animations.

Unlike some of their peers, Piknik was “never a political band,” Kukulin said, although that did not stop it from becoming entwined in politics. In the 1980s, Soviet authorities banned the group — along with many others — from using recording studios, while Soviet newspapers complained of the group’s lyrics, including a song called “Opium Smoke” that authorities saw as encouraging drug use.

In recent years, some of Russia’s most prominent rock stars have left their country, fed up with President Vladimir V. Putin’s curbs on freedom of expression, including regular crackdowns on concerts. Piknik had benefited from that exodus, Kukulin said, because the band had fewer competitors on Russia’s heritage rock circuit.

Unlike some musicians, Shklyarsky had not acted as a booster for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kukulin said. Still, Ukrainian authorities have long banned Piknik from performing in the country because the group has played concerts in occupied Crimea. In a 2016 interview , Shklyarsky said he was not concerned about the ban.

“Politics comes and goes, but life remains,” he said.

Kukulin said that among Piknik’s songs was “ To the Memory of Innocent Victims ” — a track that could be interpreted as being about those who were politically oppressed under communism. Now, Kukulin said, many fans were hearing the song in a new way, as a tribute to those who lost their lives in Friday’s attack.

Anton Troianovski

news analysis

A deadly attack shatters Putin’s promise of security to the Russian people.

Less than a week ago, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed a fifth term with his highest-ever share of the vote, using a stage-managed election to show the nation and the world that he was firmly in control.

Just days later came a searing counterpoint: His vaunted security apparatus failed to prevent Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years.

The assault on Friday, which killed at least 133 people at a concert hall in suburban Moscow, was a blow to Mr. Putin’s aura as a leader for whom national security is paramount. That is especially true after two years of a war in Ukraine that he describes as key to Russia’s survival — and which he cast as his top priority after the election last Sunday.

“The election demonstrated a seemingly confident victory,” Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political scientist, said in a phone interview from Moscow. “And suddenly, against the backdrop of a confident victory, there’s this demonstrative humiliation.”

Mr. Putin seemed blindsided by the assault. It took him more than 19 hours to address the nation about the attack, the deadliest in Russia since the 2004 school siege in Beslan, in the country’s south, which claimed 334 lives. When he did, the Russian leader said nothing about the mounting evidence that a branch of the Islamic State committed the attack.

Instead, Mr. Putin hinted that Ukraine was behind the tragedy and said the assailants had acted “just like the Nazis,” who “once carried out massacres in the occupied territories” — evoking his frequent, false description of present-day Ukraine as being run by neo-Nazis.

“Our common duty now — our comrades at the front, all citizens of the country — is to be together in one formation,” Mr. Putin said at the end of a five-minute speech, trying to conflate the fight against terrorism with his invasion of Ukraine.

The question is how much of the Russian public will buy into his argument. They might ask whether Mr. Putin, with the invasion and his conflict with the West, truly has the country’s security interests at heart — or whether he is woefully forsaking them, as many of his opponents say he is.

The fact that Mr. Putin apparently ignored a warning from the United States about a potential terrorist attack is likely to deepen the skepticism. Instead of acting on the warnings and tightening security, he dismissed them as “provocative statements.”

“All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,” Mr. Putin said on Tuesday in a speech to the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, referring to the Western warnings. After the attack on Friday, some of his exiled critics have cited his response as evidence of the president’s detachment from Russia’s true security concerns.

Rather than keeping society safe from actual, violent terrorists, those critics say, Mr. Putin has directed his sprawling security services to pursue dissidents, journalists and anyone deemed a threat to the Kremlin’s definition of “traditional values.”

A case in point: Just hours before the attack, state media reported that the Russian authorities had added “the L.G.B.T. movement” to an official list of “terrorists and extremists”; Russia had already outlawed the gay rights movement last year. Terrorism was also among the many charges prosecutors leveled against Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader who died last month .

“In a country in which counterterrorism special forces chase after online commenters,” Ruslan Leviev, an exiled Russian military analyst, wrote in a social media post on Saturday, “terrorists will always feel free.”

Even as the Islamic State repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attack and Ukraine denied any involvement, the Kremlin’s messengers pushed into overdrive to try to persuade the Russian public that this was merely a ruse.

Olga Skabeyeva, a state television host, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian military intelligence had found assailants “who would look like ISIS. But this is no ISIS.” Margarita Simonyan, the editor of the state-run RT television network, wrote that reports of Islamic State responsibility amounted to a “basic sleight of hand” by the American news media.

On a prime-time television talk show on the state-run Channel 1, Russia’s best-known ultraconservative ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, declared that Ukraine’s leadership and “their puppet masters in the Western intelligence services” had surely organized the attack.

It was an effort to “undermine trust in the president,” Mr. Dugin said, and it showed regular Russians that they had no choice but to unite behind Mr. Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Mr. Dugin’s daughter was killed in a car bombing near Moscow in 2022 that U.S. officials said was indeed authorized by parts of the Ukrainian government , but without American involvement.

U.S. officials have said there is no evidence of Ukrainian involvement in the concert hall attack, and Ukrainian officials ridiculed the Russian accusations. Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, said Mr. Putin’s claim that the attackers had fled toward Ukraine and intended to cross into it, with the help of the Ukrainian authorities, made no sense.

In recent months, Mr. Putin has appeared more confident than at any other point since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian forces have retaken the initiative on the front line, while Ukraine is struggling amid flagging Western support and a shortage of troops.

Inside Russia, the election — and its predetermined outcome — underscored Mr. Putin’s dominance over the nation’s politics.

Mr. Kynev, the political scientist, said he believed many Russians were now in “shock,” because “restoring order has always been Vladimir Putin’s calling card.”

Mr. Putin’s early years in power were marked by terrorist attacks, culminating in the Beslan school siege in 2004; he used those violent episodes to justify his rollback of political freedoms. Before Friday, the most recent mass-casualty terrorist attack in the capital region was a suicide bombing at an airport in Moscow in 2011 that killed 37 people.

Still, given the Kremlin’s efficacy in cracking down on dissent and the news media, Mr. Kynev predicted that the political consequences of the concert hall attack would be limited, as long as the violence was not repeated.

“To be honest,” he said, “our society has gotten used to keeping quiet about inconvenient topics.”

Constant Méheut contributed reporting.

There have been other deadly attacks at concerts and music festivals in recent years.

The attack before a sold-out rock concert near Moscow on Friday was the latest in a series of mass killings at concerts and music festivals around the world in recent years.

During the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel last year, Hamas targeted Tribe of Nova’s Supernova Sukkot Gathering , a dance music festival in Re’im, leaving at least 360 dead , according to the Israeli authorities. Gunmen surrounded the music festival at daybreak, killing and kidnapping attendees as others fled in their cars, only to find roads blocked and the event surrounded. “It was like a shooting range,” said Hila Fakliro, who was bartending around sunrise. Around 3,000 people had come to the event, timed to the end of the harvest holiday Sukkot.

In May 2017, a suicide bombing killed 22 people and injured hundreds more at an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena in England. The assailant, a British citizen of Libyan descent, detonated explosives packed with nails, bolts and ball bearings moments after the performance ended, sending the crowd — filled with children and adolescent fans of the pop singer, who was then 23 — into a panic. Intelligence officials found that the bomber had previously traveled to Libya to meet with members of an Islamic State unit linked to terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, which included an assault on a concert venue.

In November 2015, 90 people were killed at the Bataclan , a Paris music venue that holds 1,500, when three men armed with assault rifles and suicide vests stormed a concert by the California rock band Eagles of Death Metal. The musicians fled the stage as gunfire broke out, and attendees tried to hide from the assailants. A standoff with the police lasted more than two hours, with concertgoers held as hostages, ending when the police entered the club. One attacker was killed; two others detonated suicide vests. “Carnage,” one attendee posted on Facebook from inside the club. “Bodies everywhere.”

The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history took place at a music festival in October 2017, when a gunman fatally shot 60 people and injured hundreds more attending the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas . The assailant had stockpiled 23 firearms in a 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, opening fire from his window as Jason Aldean was onstage singing “When She Says Baby.” “It was just total chaos,” Melissa Ayala, who attended the festival with four friends, said. “People falling down and laying everywhere. We were trying to take cover and we had no idea where to go.” The F.B.I. concluded that the motive for the killings was unclear, but released files last year suggesting that the gunman, a gambler, was angry over casinos scaling back on perks. He had searched “biggest open air concert venues in USA” and reserved a hotel room overlooking the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago before settling on the Las Vegas event as his target.

The people killed at recent concerts and music festivals were commemorated earlier this year at the Grammy Awards . “Music must always be our safe space,” Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, which gives out the awards, said during the telecast. “When that’s violated, it strikes at the very core of who we are.”

Christina Goldbaum

The ISIS branch the U.S. blames for the attack has targeted the Taliban’s links with allies, including Russia.

The ISIS affiliate that American officials say was behind the deadly attack in Moscow is one of the last significant antagonists that the Taliban government faces in Afghanistan, and it has carried out repeated attacks there, including on the Russian Embassy, in recent years.

That branch of ISIS — known as the Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K — has portrayed itself as the primary rival to the Taliban, who it says have not implemented true Shariah law since seizing power in 2021. It has sought to undermine the Taliban’s relationships with regional allies and portray the government as unable to provide security in the country, experts say.

In 2022, ISIS-K carried out attacks on the Russian and Pakistani embassies in Kabul and a hotel that was home to many Chinese nationals. More recently, it has also threatened attacks against the Chinese, Indian and Iranian embassies in Afghanistan and has released a flood of anti-Russian propaganda.

It has also struck outside Afghanistan. In January, ISIS-K carried out twin bombings in Iran that killed scores and wounded hundreds of others at a memorial service for Iran’s former top general, Qassim Suleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike four years before.

In recent months, the Taliban’s relationship with Russia, as well as China and Iran, has warmed up. While no country has officially recognized the Taliban government, earlier this month Russia accepted a military attaché from the Taliban in Moscow, while China officially accepted a Taliban ambassador to the country. Both moves were seen as confidence-building measures with Taliban authorities.

ISIS-K has both denounced the Kremlin for its interventions in Syria and condemned the Taliban for engaging with Russian authorities decades after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

Its propaganda has painted the Taliban as “betraying the history of Afghanistan and betraying their religion by making friends with their former enemies,” said Ricardo Valle, the director of research of the Khorasan Diary, a research platform based in Islamabad.

In the more than two years since they took over in Afghanistan, Taliban security forces have conducted a ruthless campaign to try to eliminate ISIS-K and have successfully prevented the group from seizing territory within Afghanistan. Last year, Taliban security forces killed at least eight ISIS-K leaders, according to American officials, and pushed many other fighters into neighboring Pakistan .

Still, ISIS-K has proved resilient and remained active across Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Within Afghanistan, it has targeted Taliban security forces in hit-and-run attacks and — as it came under increasing pressure from Taliban counterterrorism operations — staged headline-grabbing attacks across the country. Just a day before the attack at the concert hall in Moscow, the group carried out a suicide bombing in Kandahar — the birthplace of the Taliban movement — sending a powerful message that even Taliban soldiers in the group’s heartland were not safe.

After the attack in Moscow, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, said in a statement on social media that the country “condemns in the strongest terms the recent terrorist attack in Moscow” and “considers it a blatant violation of all human standards.”

“Regional countries must take a coordinated, clear and resolute position against such incidents directed at regional de-stabilization,” he added.

Oleg Matsnev

Names of the victims are beginning to emerge.

As emergency services combed the scene of the attack on a concert hall in Moscow, details on some of the victims began to emerge from officials and local news media.

Most of those identified so far appeared to be in their 40s, and many had traveled from other parts of the country to attend the concert where Piknik, a Russian rock band formed in the late 1970s, was slated to perform on Friday night.

Alexander Baklemyshev, 51, had long dreamed about seeing the band, his son told local media , and had traveled solo from his home city of Satka, some 1,000 miles east of Moscow, for the concert.

His son, Maksim, told the Russian news outlet MSK1 that his father had sent him a video of the concert hall before the attack. That was the last he heard from his father.

Irina Okisheva and her husband, Pavel Okishev, also traveled hundreds of miles to attend the concert — making their way from Kirov, northeast of Moscow. Mr. Okishev had received the tickets as an early birthday present. He was set to turn 35 next week, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported. Both he and his wife died in the attack, the paper reported.

“Very painful and scary,” Ms. Okisheva’s colleagues wrote on a social media page for a photo studio where she worked. “The whole studio team is horrified by what happened.”

Anastasiya Volkova lost both of her parents in the attack. She told 5 TV that she had missed a call from her mother on Friday night at around the time of the attack. When she called back, there was no response, Ms. Volkova said.

As the death toll climbed to 133 people, the Moscow region’s health care ministry published a preliminary list of victims . It had 41 names; Andrey Rudnitsky was one of them.

A forward in an amateur hockey league, he turned 39 years old last week, according to his page on the league’s website. Mr. Rudnitsky’s teammates told Pro Gorod , a local news website, that he had moved to Moscow last year from Yaroslavl but planned to return home to play there. Mr. Rudnitsky had two children.

Ekaterina Novoselova, 42, was also on the list. Ms. Novoselova won a beauty pageant in 2001 in her home city of Tver, 110 miles northwest of Moscow, one of the pageant organizer’s told the local news outlet TIA . It reported that she had moved to Moscow to work as a lawyer and is survived by her husband and two children.

Some people appeared to have been named by mistake. Yevgeniya Ryumina, 38, told Komsomolskaya Pravda that she had fled the concert hall to safety. But she had lost her ID, Ms. Ryumina said, suggesting that might have led to the confusion.

This is what we know about the attack.

An attack Friday at a popular concert venue near Moscow killed 137 people, the deadliest act of terrorism the Russian capital region has seen in more than a decade.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack; American officials have attributed it to ISIS-K, a branch of the group.

Russian officials and state media have largely ignored ISIS’s claim of responsibility and instead suggested that Ukraine was behind the violence. Ukraine has denied any involvement, and American officials say there is no evidence connecting Kyiv to the attack.

Russian authorities have detained at least 11 people, including four migrant laborers described as Tajik citizens who have been charged with committing a terrorist act, but they have not identified most of the accused assailants or their motives.

Here’s a closer look at the attack.

What happened?

The gunmen entered the Crocus City Hall building, one of the biggest entertainment complexes in the Moscow area, with capacity of more than 6,000, shortly before a sold-out rock concert was scheduled to start. Armed with automatic rifles, they began shooting.

Using explosives and flammable liquids, Russian investigators said, they set the building ablaze, causing chaos as people began to run. The fire quickly engulfed more than a third of the building, spreading smoke and causing parts of the roof to collapse. Russia’s emergency service posted a video and pictures from after the fire showing charred seating and firefighters working to remove debris.

Russian law enforcement said that people had died from gunshot wounds and poisoning from the smoke.

At least three helicopters were dispatched to extinguish the fire or to try to rescue people from the roof. The firefighters were only able to contain the fire early on Saturday; the emergency service said it was mostly extinguished by 5 a.m.

The search for survivors ended on Saturday, as details about the victims began to emerge. Many of the more than 100 people injured in the attack were in critical condition.

Where are the assailants?

Attackers were able to flee the scene. Early on Saturday, the head of Russia’s top security agency, the F.S.B., said that 11 people had been detained in the connection to the attack, including “all four terrorists directly involved.” The four men were arraigned late Sunday and charged with committing a terrorist act, according to state and independent media outlets, and they face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The press service of the Basmanny District Court said that the first two defendants, Dalerjon B. Mirzoyev and Saidakrami M. Rachalbalizoda, had pleaded guilty to the charges.

It did not specify any plea from the other two — Muhammadsobir Z. Fayzov, a 19-year-old barber and the youngest of the men charged, and Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, a married factory worker with an 8-month-old baby — according to Mediazona, an independent news outlet.

The men looked severely battered and injured as they appeared in court, and videos of them being tortured and beaten while under interrogation circulated widely on Russian social media.

There were signs that Russia would try to pin blame on Ukraine, despite the claim of responsibility by the Islamic State. The F.S.B. said in a statement that the attack had been carefully planned and that the terrorists had tried to flee toward Ukraine.

How are Russians responding?

President Vladimir V. Putin, who claimed victory in a presidential election last weekend, did not publicly address the tragedy until Saturday afternoon. In a five-minute address to the nation, he appeared to be laying the groundwork to blame Ukraine for the attack, claiming that “the Ukrainian side” had “prepared a window” for the attackers to cross the border from Russia into Ukraine.

But he did not definitively assign blame, saying that those responsible would be punished, “whoever they may be, whoever may have sent them.”

The attack has punctured the sense of relative safety for Muscovites over the past decade, bringing back memories of attacks that shadowed life in the Russian capital in the 2000s.

Russia observed a national day of mourning on Sunday as questions lingered about the identities and motives of the perpetrators. Flags were lowered to half-staff at buildings across the country.

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting.

Pandora Papers Name Alleged Offshore Beneficiaries with Putin Links

Leaked financial papers published by an international group of investigative journalists Sunday implicated several close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin in allegedly hiding mass amounts of wealth in offshore firms. 

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said that Russian nationals are “disproportionately represented” in the Pandora Papers, with 14% of the more than 27,000 named companies having Russian beneficiaries and 46 Russian oligarchs found to use offshore companies.

The investigative news website iStories, ICIJ’s partner organization in Russia, delved into the biggest names in Putin’s inner circle implicated in the leak:  

Konstantin Ernst 

iStories reported that Ernst, the CEO of Russia’s largest state television channel, made billions of rubles by demolishing Soviet-era cinemas in Moscow and building shopping malls in their place through an offshore company.   

Ernst, 60, registered an offshore in his name in the British Virgin Islands in 2014, the same year he orchestrated the opening and closing ceremonies of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

In November 2014, Moscow city authorities auctioned off 39 historic Soviet-era cinemas across the capital to a company linked to Ernst’s offshore firm, Moscow Dvorik Ltd. The leaked files also show that Ernst was the beneficiary of a $16.2 million loan — from a Cyprus bank partly owned by Russian state-owned bank VTB — used to fund his stake in the deal. 

Ernst denied that the deal was part of his compensation for the Winter Olympics ceremonies and told ICIJ that he did not do anything illegal, because “this is how my parents raised me.”

While he confirmed that he was linked to Moscow Dvorik, Ernst did not explain why he registered a company in the British Virgin Islands; why his partner denied his involvement in this business; or why lawyers demanded that the offshore registrar not send information about shareholders to the British Virgin Islands’ corporate register.  

Rostec 

The family of Sergei Chemezov, CEO of Russian state defense conglomerate Rostec, hid properties worth 22 billion rubles — including a superyacht and a villa in Spain — in offshore firms, iStories said . 

Chemezov, who is under U.S. and EU sanctions, is considered one of Putin’s closest associates and one of the most influential figures at the intersection of Russian business and politics. 

According to the investigation, Chemezov's stepdaughter Anastasia Ignatova is the owner of British Virgin Islands-registered offshore Delima Services Ltd., to which the 85-meter, $140 million yacht is registered. She also allegedly owns a hacienda in Spain with an estimated worth of 15 million euros.   

The Pandora Papers uncovered a new luxury villa in Spain allegedly owned by Ignatova and Chemezov’s mother-in-law Lyudmila Rukavishnikova via the offshore Penimar Holdings Ltd., among other assets.  

Putin’s alleged mistress   

Financial records analyzed by ICIJ also found that Putin’s alleged mistress Svetlana Krivonogikh purchased a $4.1 million apartment in Monaco via an offshore company that she became beneficiary of in 2006. 

The company was reportedly set up weeks after Krivonogikh gave birth in 2003 to Luiza Vladimirovna Rozova, whom Russian investigative reporters named as Putin’s alleged extramarital daughter last year.

Russian authorities banned Proekt, the investigative outlet that broke the story on Putin’s alleged extramarital daughter, as an “undesirable” organization this summer  and placed several of its journalists on their list of “foreign agents.”   

Sberbank’s CEO  

German Gref, the CEO of state-owned lender Sberbank, established an offshore company in Singapore which was used to store more than $55 million in family assets, according to documents obtained by the Pandora Papers.

The beneficiaries of the family offshore Angelus Trust were Gref’s wife Yana, son Oleg, daughters Maria and Eva, brother Eugene and an individual named Philip Albert Gref, the investigation said. 

Transneft   

The son-in-law of Nikolai Tokarev, the head of state-owned oil pipeline giant Transneft and a longtime acquaintance and colleague of Putin, became a citizen of Cyprus and set up offshores to manage Transneft’s contractors with contracts worth billions of rubles, iStories said.   

Tokarev’s daughter Maya Bolotova and her now ex-husband Andrei Bolotov received passports from EU member Cyprus in 2014, the same year that Transneft was sanctioned by the EU.  

Financial records cited by the Pandora Papers show that Bolotov was the beneficiary of a dozen offshore companies. In 2014-2015, Bolotov was the beneficiary of at least three Cypriot companies through firms registered in the British Virgin Islands together with Georgy Bedzhamov, the former co-owner of Vneshprombank who was under investigation for embezzlement of over 100 billion rubles in 2015. 

Honorable mentions 

Roman Putin,  a son of the president’s cousin and the beneficiary of Infinite Capital Corp, registered in 2012 in the Seychelles, and its owner until 2013.

Nikolai Yegorov, one of Putin’s university friends and since 2016 also the owner of Pollux Global Corp registered in the British Virgin Islands. Since 2018, the company has been in the process of liquidation.

Victor Khmarin , another university friend of Putin’s who became a beneficiary of the British Virgin Islands-registered offshore Luciano Services Corp.

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