France on Monday joined the United States in saying intelligence indicated Islamic State was responsible for an attack on concert hall outside Moscow that killed 137 people, while Russia continued to suggest that Ukraine was to blame, Reuters reports.
In the deadliest attack inside Russia for two decades, four men burst into the Crocus City Hall on Friday night, spraying people with bullets during a concert by the Soviet-era rock group Picnic. Alongside the dead, 182 people were wounded.
Four men, at least one a Tajik, were remanded in custody on terrorism charges. They appeared separately, led into a cage at Moscow's Basmanny district court by Federal Security Service officers.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, a claim that the United States has publicly said it believes, and the militant group has since released what it says is footage from the attack. U.S. officials said they had warned Russia of intelligence about an imminent attack earlier this month.
"The information available to us ... as well as to our main partners, indicates indeed that it was an entity of the Islamic State which instigated this attack," French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters, referring to Islamic State's affiliate in Afghanistan, which is known as ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K.
"This group also tried to commit several actions on our own soil," he said during a visit to French Guiana.
France raised its terror alert warning to its highest level on Sunday following the shootings in Moscow.
