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