Russia suffered its deadliest terrorist attack in decades on Friday evening when a group of four assailants in combat fatigues stormed a packed suburban Moscow concert venue and opened fire with automatic rifles.
The attack took place shortly before the band Picnic, one of the country’s most popular rock bands, was set to begin a sold-out show in the auditorium at Crocus City Hall. In addition to the hail of bullets, the attackers also used explosives to set fire to the 6,200-capacity venue, according to Russian investigators, causing the building’s roof to partially collapse. The death toll was 140 as of Wednesday, with 182 wounded and at least 95 missing, according to a Russian news outlet.
The assault jolted Russia and its leadership, and even before the wreckage was cleared Russian president Vladimir Putin was suggesting Ukraine was involved in the attack. But according to assessments by American and European intelligence officials, the real culprit was a group known as ISIS-K, an offshoot of the Islamic State terrorist group. The Islamic State also issued a statement on Friday claiming responsibility for the attack.
So who is ISIS-K? Here’s what else you should know about the militant group.
How Did ISIS-K Form and Where Is It Based?
The K in ISIS-K stands for Khorasan Province, a reference to a historical region of Central Asia that now comprises parts of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. (Authorities have identified the four suspects in the attack as citizens of Tajikistan, a troubled former Soviet state that often serves as a recruiting ground for the group.)
Experts say ISIS-K took shape in 2014, when militants from other groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including al-Qaida and the Taliban, defected and then joined forces with the Islamic State, the extremist group also known as ISIS, IS or by its Arabic acronym, Daesh. The group once held large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq and has been linked to dozens of terrorist attacks around the world.
Photos: Russia Concert Hall Attack
In early 2015, Islamic State leaders officially declared its new Khorasan chapter, led by a former Afghan Taliban commander named Hafiz Saeed Khan, who would later be killed in a U.S.-led airstrike.
The new group drew recruits from the Taliban and other militant groups and was based in Afghanistan, where it took control of some rural areas and began carrying out attacks against everyone from the Taliban and Afghan government forces to civilians, aid workers and journalists.
Today ISIS-K is based in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan and is led by a 29-year-old named Sanaullah Ghafari. One 2023 U.N. report placed the group’s numbers in Afghanistan, including fighters and family members, at between 4,000 and 6,000.
What Does ISIS-K Want?
As an offshoot of ISIS, ISIS-K adheres to the same ideology, which “seeks to establish a global, transnational caliphate that is governed by Islamic jurisprudence,” according to experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
The group adheres to an extremist creed that states that anyone who rejects Sharia – or Islamic law – can be executed, and the aim of the ISIS-K offshoot is to expand ISIS’s presence in Central and South Asia.
Why Did ISIS-K Target Moscow?
According to Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at The Soufan Group, a security consultancy, ISIS-K has lately been particularly focused on Russia because of the Kremlin’s history of interventions in Afghanistan, Syria and Chechnya. (The former Soviet Union fought in Afghanistan the 1970s and ‘80s. In the 1990s Russia bombed the breakaway Muslim republic of Chechnya, and Russia has been supporting Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in that country’s civil war since 2015.)
“ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years,” Clarke recently told the New York Times. “ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood in its hands.”
Has ISIS-K Carried Out Other High-Profile Attacks?
Yes. In the summer of 2021, as U.S. troops and large numbers of Afghans and foreigners were trying to evacuate Afghanistan by air amid a Taliban takeover, ISIS-K suicide bombers detonated bombs outside Kabul’s airport. The attack killed nearly 200 people, including 13 U.S. troops, and prompted even more criticism of the Biden administration’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal. Analysts also viewed the bombings as a sign of ISIS-K’s resurgence after the group had earlier been decimated by fighting with the Taliban, as well as a troubling potential preview of more violence facilitated by Afghanistan’s power vacuum.
“This is ISIS-K showing through force that, in fact, it’s virtually impossible for a group like the Taliban – without the kinds of assets that the United States and the international community have – to keep them from using Afghanistan in the future as a safe haven, a sanctuary to conduct transnational terrorist attacks,” M. Lyla Kohistany, a former U.S. naval intelligence officer, told FRONTLINE at the time.
ISIS-K also claimed responsibility for an attack in Iran earlier this year, when two suicide bombers detonated explosive vests at a crowded memorial for the late Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killing nearly 100 people. That attack prompted promises of revenge from Iranian officials – the Shiite country is another frequent target of the Sunni extremist group – and even more concern among foreign officials about the terrorist group’s capabilities.
How Has the U.S. Responded to the Moscow Attack?
The Biden administration has condemned the attack, calling ISIS “a common terrorist enemy that must be defeated everywhere.” Two weeks before the operation, American intelligence officials had actually advised Putin’s team that such a terror attack on Moscow was imminent, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a warning to American citizens. Putin publicly dismissed the American warnings.
“We had a duty to warn them of information that we had, clearly that they didn’t have,” John Kirby, the Biden administration’s national security spokesman, told reporters this week. “We did that.”
How Have International Leaders Reacted to the Moscow Attack?
Other foreign leaders have also condemned the attack, including French president Emmanuel Macron, who revealed on Monday that ISIS-K had also made “several attempts” to attack targets in France in recent months. French authorities are also seeking to reassure the public ahead of the Paris Olympics this summer, and some countries, including Italy and Serbia, have stepped up security measures.
How Has Russia Responded to the ISIS-K Attack on Moscow?
After initially placing the blame squarely on Ukraine, Putin has since acknowledged that the attack was carried out by Islamic militants. Russian authorities have also named the four Tajik suspects, who appear to have been beaten and tortured, and arrested at least eight others in connection to the attack.
Yet even while acknowledging the culprits’ identities, Putin has continued to insinuate, without evidence, that Ukraine and the West are somehow behind the attack.
“The question that arises is who benefits from this?” the Russian president said in a televised address on Monday. “We know by whose hand the crime against Russia and its people was committed. But what is of interest to us is who ordered it.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has angrily rejected Moscow’s accusations and American officials have also stated there’s no connection between Ukraine and the terror group.
Where Else Might ISIS-K Strike?
The bad news is that major attacks like the Moscow assault often help recruiting efforts and fundraising, and in the global battle for jihadis, ISIS-K’s profile appears to be on the rise.
“ISIS-K has been seeking to outperform rival jihadi groups,” Asfandyar Mir, an expert at the United States Institute of Peace, told NPR. “By carrying out more audacious attacks it really distinguishes its jihadi brand.”
