A Tajik security source said on Friday, March 29 (10 April) that the government has arrested a suspect in connection with the attack on a concert hall near Moscow, the capital of Russia.

The Islamic State group (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on the concert hall.

In the attacks last Friday, which will be considered the deadliest attack in the last two decades in Russia, four armed individuals, who were citizens of Tajikistan and were arrested by Russian forces, opened fire on the participants.

In addition, seven other suspects have been arrested after this deadly attack, and some of them are citizens of Central Asian countries, countries that used to be part of the former Soviet Union.

This security source said that the State Security Committee of Tajikistan arrested nine people in the city of Vahdat on Monday. According to him, these suspects have now been transferred to the capital, Kishwar, on Monday, but he did not provide more details.

At least 143 people were killed and dozens of others were injured in the attack on the concert hall that took place near Moscow last Friday.

In addition to being a member of the Security Council under the leadership of Russia, Tajikistan also hosts a Moscow military base. Sources told Reuters that Tajikistan has also detained family members of suspected militants. According to these sources, they are being held for extradition by Russian investigators in Dushanbe.

Tajikistan, which borders Afghanistan, has a population of 10 million, and the majority of its population is made up of Muslims. Part of Tajikistan’s labor force depends on Russia for business imports and employment, because the country’s economy was severely damaged during the 1990 civil war.

The Islamic State group (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on a concert hall near Moscow. US officials have said that based on their intelligence, the Khorasan branch of Daesh, which is based in Afghanistan, carried out the attack.

But Russian investigators said on Thursday that they had found evidence that the gunmen involved in the shooting at the concert hall were Ukrainian nationalists, a claim that the United States immediately rejected and called propaganda baseless.

Kiev has also strongly denied involvement in the deadly attack on the concert hall. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the President of Ukraine, responded to this accusation by saying that “Putin is speaking on TV again and again.” And once again he blames Ukraine.

The attack on Friday will be considered the deadliest attack in Russia in the last two decades. Earlier, in 2004, Islamist extremists besieged a school in Baslan and took more than 1,000 people, including children, hostage. During the attack, when the school was under the control of the extremists for three days, 330 people, most of whom were schoolchildren, were killed.

Four attackers, dressed in military uniforms, entered a concert hall in the city of “Croix” on Friday night.

This concert hall has 6,200 seats and Russian media reported that all 6,200 tickets were sold for the concert group “Picnic” in this hall.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, March 23, called the attack on a concert hall near Moscow a “brutal terrorist attack” and vowed to punish the perpetrators of the incident.

_{Part of this report was taken from Reuters and France Press.}