voice only grow hire. one person has been killed in a shooting that occurred near the federal security service building in central moscow witnesses have described what they saw. 35 to 10 minutes past 6 the gunfire began and it was not just a few shots that came in bursts which we saw officers taking cover behind because they knew to release footage reportedly shows the shooter at the moment of the attack police say the attacker was acting alone she does identity that has yet to be confirmed.

thanks for joining us here on out international for breaking news this hour from central moscow where numerous shots being fired in the immediate vicinity of the federal security service building one person as being confirmed killed this video will show you here it is reportedly. shows the shooter at the moment of the tank shooting a still it's a being acting alone his identity is yet to be confirmed the area around the scene has been cordoned off for the following we'll show you now is footage of the moment of the sheets. but as i was sitting with my friends the people when the shooting began it was the sound of a kalashnikov assault rifle i know what it sounds like my friends were like oh it must be firecrackers but i told them no way it's not firecrackers and then we saw people running down the street. it was scary 1st missile people running and then

a swat team armed with assault rifles came running in the opposite direction and then we heard a massive go of fire we don't know what exactly happened there offices all systems stay away from the windows and they let us leave the bar after a few hours. of the illusion the immediacy of the when we heard strange sounds to me needed to realize that we should hide then we heard someone in the street shouting go back go back since i don't know who was screaming because i didn't see anything he told like the shooting last and for a very long time it seemed to me that it was about 15 minutes but maybe it just felt like that some random shots were heard for the whole hour until 7 pm central. ok we're joined by r.t. course for riff and ocean as she is in central moscow today she's right in front of the location where the assault took place f.s.b. headquarters also seem like now maria. hi neal well yes i'm in central moscow right now and i can tell you that there are

2 absolutely different pictures here on the run from one side it's very sad what you can see behind me is it that massive yellow brick structure of the main building off russia's federal security service known as apast b. which used to be by the way the headquarters of famous soviet k.g.b. as well the historic legendary famous and a very symbolic building this is why many say whatever that track was it's meant to target the state police 20 police cars you can also see them behind me they are cordoned off the streets around that building no people all the calls are allowed to go beyond that a lying still hours after the shooting happened here on my right the result so he story building one of russia's biggest and oldest kid stores which is right now also empty and has been closed 1 for many hours since the forest gunshots. were

heard here and downtown most came from the other side behind our camera from what you can prove probably cannot see right now is what i can describe as ordinary life with people taking pictures of most case famous sighs and beauties meeting friends coming back home from work or just from there even if he was he's shopping steward based on taken dinners day teen you know whatever you can imagine happening there this evening and the reason mantra in st metro station near it's open by the way i came here using the subways well it wasn't close either to different features and indeed as you kind of surreal feeling me how different they are so but all in all it is rather con right now here is different from what used to be several hours ago when the shooting happened again details a very unclear many many reports have not been very far but we received many of

them but what is confirmed at this moment that at least one half is being officer has been killed 2 others are still in critical condition here in one of moscow's hospitals and we also hear that if is the says there was only one person involved in the attack and this person was killed during the operation and he's identity is right now being established this is pretty much all we know about what happened thursday evening and right now people can see them here and i mean everybody has a phone and they are filming with their phones and their police station commenting on what they post and what they tell their videos and pictures and i guess that adds to that amount of information that we receive from the ground but again there are many reports but. not many details have been in fact officially

confirmed officially very fun so most go downtown thursday evening you can imagine there were many many people here at the time when the forest gunshots were heard around 6 pm and many people witnessed the beginning of that and those events and we heard their i mean stories because later they decided to share the emotions and feelings and most of them described the 1st seconds as a moment of confusion because people simply couldn't understand what that sound of gunshots was be is they too could many of them as fireworks it's christmas time here all of this lady and ollie are police officers told them to iran and hi this is one panic actually started and i used to be war correspondent and used to work in places like syria and leave and i used to hear gunshots of course but i

understand these people most go downtown is no the place where you expect here and things like this let's listen to his stories now. and you'll see that when the shooting started i was in the office a building in the starbucks cafe i was just sitting there working at my laptop that misfit was calm christmas music playing in the background and i heard the sound of gunfire and it was the last thing i expected for the 10 minutes past 6 the gunfire begin to pause not just a few shots that came in bursts we saw officers taking cover behind the cars so i spent an hour inside that cafe the whites in there one time out and then the rule led out of the through the back door which. they get it's quite come right now here in central mosque but aid has seen rather dramatic moments some time ago again there are police cars behind me and they're cordoned off the area around.

main building of russia's federal security service and the question many now ask is why is there any operation still ongoing is there any threat coming from that direction no one knows still unclear and again little to show information and again i call on everybody who is right now here filming and posting to be very careful with the information that you give because you simply may confuse people and even try and just to give you an understanding of how central we are just after 15 minutes walk down this street which is known as because k. street will take you directly to the red square to the family to the shooting happened at the very heart of russia's capital and again this building a legendary symbolic building former k.g.b. which is whatever the attack was they say it meant to target the state and send this message and the state message back to you. they share the report rif an

auction and in the center of moscow for us back to tony hawk into the studio has been keeping christmas salient points and i think we've reduced the key information down now to. the killed and f.s.b. employee 5 injured is that correct we do have your update from the investigative committee who was there on the scene and looking at all aspects the stylus that the most of the reasoning behind this and that is obviously one f.s.b. officer killed another 5 people including one civilian have been injured so we know one other officer was a critical condition taken to hospital that means the other victims could be police we just don't know what it was staged but we know that 5 victims mention we've heard of any civilian indeed and always willing to give given the crowds time given the crowds we saw running away it's perhaps not surprising that some civilians were called to. this shooter in this gunfire given those opening moments of panic which

we saw people getting shot at to get inside let's take a look back actually at those very 1st elements his very 1st but suffice it to come from the scene at 6 here most of the time today. it's interesting to also to see how the story sort of has developed because initially when those reports came in that there were 3 shooters that they all were armed that some of them were wearing security uniforms or police uniforms of course it always seemed obvious that this was some kind of terrorist attack how could it not be yet as the clarification is have come in from official sources from the f.s.b. the ministry of health investigative committee. that you know the we've kind of put meat on the bones of the story here other options have opened up as a caller was saying earlier this could be

a number of options this could be of the struggle for employees somebody with mental health issues somebody tried to make political points there are various options available here and certainly some of what you witnessed they were saying to start with did as maria mentioned they're confused and frightened people perhaps exaggerate the situation we managed to speak to some of those witnesses on the ground to get their picture. the mom wasn't shooting randomly and i think we heard him shout out something but we didn't manage to make out what he was shouting all i saw was a silly way it was the shooter was hiding behind the opposite the car park and there were people behind the cars it's hard to see where he was shooting at those people all the cars 1st we heard the gunfire and then we saw a traffic police officer lying next to the barrier and he was laying there for quite some time. and it'll take the opportunity to this moment because you were talking about it and this is. kind of backed that up that people don't know still

what exactly was going on what the motivation of the seller was at the time of the assault they don't know how many people the ra they just know that this shooting they need to get out of out of there and there's an awful lot of social media footage floating around we can't show all of it and a lot of it needs to be verified before it can be shown there's a lot there including some videos that show russian police officers you know i think they get a lot of criticism but russian police officers going towards the shooting while telling members of the public to get back and they're shown advancing towards the danger they don't know what they're dealing with they just know that there's an imminent threat of the credit to those guys doing their job and that will help to keep the number of fatalities in the injured down of course time and time again in multiple cities across all countries we've seen. security services police. health workers you know really life and limb at risk to help them to the public and we were speaking earlier what would have potentially happened had this assailant

chosen a different target was an s.p. building if it was a transport hub a shop or a christmas market how. different this picture would have been and of course this picture would have also been different were not for the actions of police and security services on the on the on the scene very quickly evacuated that area and minimize those casualties and of course public security public safety is of paramount concern and mr putin was at that event marking national security services day that's tomorrow going to be officially 45 minutes time to $25.00 giving a speech on the importance of preventing radicalization you know terrorism and these sorts of ideas that could potentially lead to acts like this in future this is what you have to say. we need to be more active in. compromising leadership interested revocations who. it seems to drool people is

officially you. radical activist but i mean. ok many thanks for that update on hawkins alongside me he was staying with him as we head to our next guest shall shew bridges a security analyst former u.k. army officer very good even teach us. still trying to clarify the picture and the officials haven't yet come forward with a definitive assessment of the situation what's your initial inspection given the information we have at this point. well the police and security services will be looking really to establish 2 aspects of this is an absolute priority the 1st of course is the identity of this person and i may well already know that now of course will give a very good and a very strong indication i think of what their motivation in this case was what it was political or personal or indeed some other aspect that was driving the motivation here and 2nd of course even though they've said it's from according to reports that nobody else was involved in this attack they will want to be sure that nobody else was actually involved in any planning aspects or in terms of assisting

the government and that may take some time for example the examination of mobile phone records of any c.c.t.v. records and of course any. e-mail communications and so on that might be held on the suspect's computers and elsewhere and of course that would require house searches and so on and so it's going to be some time i think some hours until there's a definitive picture emerges but certainly i would agree with what your commentators and your reports of said so far that 1st of all of course until we know the full picture it's speculation hopefully informed speculation but nonetheless we still need a lot more information. given that the target appears to have been just building obviously so publicly linked with the security services in the state and given the timing on the almost that the anniversary of. the security services day as your correspondent just mentioned. because strong indications as to the motivation assuming that the government is

a rational actor but again until we know more it's difficult to come to some positive conclusion other than again to agree with your previous correspondents how this attack i think taken place against a more soft target which is usually the case with more explicit or overt terrorist acts then you would have expected i think far more casualties to have resulted i just wondered what should take. what i see is not the 1st line of defense your every day police office is it doesn't seem to. rather what country it is these are guys who let's not forget they're every day people with families wives children not massively paid in any particular country i wouldn't say you're a regular police officer yet the 1st ones to put themselves. in the line of fire tackling that danger and often police officers you know they get a lot of criticism day to day but really this should be a lot of gratitude for them. yeah absolutely and you won't participate expect me to say much i spend more and i spent quite a number of years as such

a policeman here in london and indeed from your words just now comes to mind very much not so much the most recent london bridge terrorist attack where specialist armed policeman were available to intervene very quickly on the scene very decisively as well of course to attack to a close but the previous london bridge attack died i think in 2017 where police specialist police because remember the vast majority of police in the u.k. are not even on to the side arms as they are for example in most parts of the world but in this country in britain that's not the case with specialist police indeed that incident 2 years ago on london bridge where we of course shot the 3 attackers taking place evidence emerged quite quickly leading c.c.t.v. evidence of extraordinary bravery. by an armed officers even off duty officers. actually taking on and indeed very many members of the public to taking on the heavily armed terrorists in that case even those that were wearing what

turned out to be fake suicide bomb belts butts which of course members are probably under the police got involved could have possibly known were fake at the time and so yes again and again we've got these situations where behind the scenes of course there's a lot of intelligence what's going on and again in respect of this particular instance in moscow of course there may well be questions that need to be asked about why there weren't warnings beforehand that doesn't say there always will be warnings before. an investigation or inquiry will be needed to take place i think to establish what perhaps the security services did know about the possibility of this taking place if anything and then what was done about that and that's also of course the case in terrorist attacks and similar incidences this is we've seen in moscow even though we don't know it's a terrorist attack so far the effect is the same around the world not just in russia the police and security services will be going through. and investigation that is very similar to investigations carried out anywhere else in the world i'd

like to sort of bring a couple of questions together here i'm not sure whether or not you'll have this level of sort of knowledge inside of russia or not but give it give it your best shot 1st of all in talking about how somebody would have a reportedly automatic rifle perhaps a kalashnikov going towards the f.s.b. headquarters how easy is it to get over in russia and what level of security would assailant of been meeting just how much defense protocol is there in place in a national security headquarters. to i'm not an expert on the gun laws in. russia but countries certainly that i know close to russia geographically. for example the factory is one that and indeed parts of ukraine you could argue in some ways that there. is free availability of weaponry even high powered weaponry such as certainly i think that's perhaps early to say but i think even from the footage

that we've seen we can't say conclusively that this was an automatic weapon but of course it's possible to have deactivated weapons that can then be reactivated. if that's what you want to do but i think there is such a supply of weaponry for example from the balkan still from the ukraine remember there's still an ongoing conflict there where weapons have been poured in by various artists and i think it's relatively easy in some parts of the world to obtain these kind. weapons of course you run the risk that you're going to be stopped and searched or so there is doesn't appear to be any issue of a failure of physical security here at least as far as you know because there don't appear to be any suggestion so far the ash was able to enter the building itself and so we've got a situation again where i think the lesson that will be learned by quite a few people watching this perhaps some bad actors watching this in fact will draw conclusions that once again it's pretty futile to attack what could be construed to be hard targets and we've seen that the f.s.b.

building is a hard target and the gate indeed the results of that that the gunman died and also one other person sadly has died and perhaps others may still be from the injuries but that the casualty count is relatively low and that although it's obviously not encouraged but i think it's stating the obvious. if terrorists increasingly want to. cause mass casualties so they target soft targets and they don't target buildings such as this unless perhaps they've got some personal grudge or unless they're making some kind of political statement against the state but then again the targets they could choose. to hold is in a studio alongside neal we have seen an increased number of attacks pretty much in all my european cities in all major countries and they have used quite a variety of tactics whether these are terrorists whether these are individuals with grudges with mental health issues from. life attacks bombs i mean given the differences in gun laws in weapon availability i mean how do you explain these

differences in tactics used by these assailants spraying the rising number of attacks as well because obviously people are perhaps more aware of what's going on because of you know the nature of 24 hour media the nature of social media that everybody has a smartphone and you know things across the world in a matter of seconds but what explains the rise in number of these attacks i mean is that you know blowback potentially from foreign domestic policies that increased problems with mental health old you know lack of funding to deal with these people mental health probably you know quite a complex issue. yeah i think you're absolutely right daniel it is a complex issue as many overlapping factors and the factors will differ in each individual case and we can't it's a we know more of course and i know you're not suggesting this anyway but until we know more about this individual case it's difficult to say what the motivation is or what the factors that might lie behind it but the fact is i think that even if you were going to have the most benign government the most benign state in any

country in the world you will get some people who will react violently to the policies of that or perhaps just react violently because of policy because of instance or background or the circumstances of their own personal lives what determines the effectiveness of those attacks i think the availability of weapons that can be used so for example we've seen in some cases where let's say there's been some degree of planning and where some perhaps degree of training has taken place for example let's say the local example here in london the 77 attacks where there was a suggestion that people got off to pakistan to training camps for example and received training we've also got situations that we've seen in paris now where people have come back from places such as libya syria and of course i could be that were surprised to britain if we think of the manchester bombing that killed many people mostly young people again just a couple of years ago again there's libya connections and so you've got a situation where again to make it a general statement as opposed to specific to this moscow case where you've got

a situation where i think generally instability has increased the prospects of terrorism taking place not only because you've got a situation where the west for example has been intervening in countries such as syria iraq libya and that has produced to some extent at least a motivation for attacks taking place and again i'm emphasizing i'm not trying to speak with any knowledge of this moscow attack but certainly the majority of taxes taken place for example in britain the motivation and i say that from what the bombers or the killers of the attackers have stated themselves either in a suicide videos or in a court appearance later most of them have said. western foreign policy was a factor in that there's a perception of course that the west has been attacking a lot of muslim countries killing a lot of muslim people and of course the actions of the west is good we think of iraq syria libya and so on has of course played into that narrative and so some people will be affected by that also of course the interventions in causing this instability in countries such as libya syria has created if you like an incubator

a safe space for terrorism amongst ungoverned space to actually flourish and then people have a quiet then the necessary skills and experience and training in some cases to don't come back and pose a threat in other countries but still it's probably the case that the majority of instances are involving people who have been radicalized themselves through these matters or other factors and then dave adopted especially more recently since the attacks on the leadership of groups such as al qaida nice's has become so successful of course russia has played an important part of that important part in dealing with isis in that respect that people are able to use makeshift weapons for example vehicles or not. quite devastating effect as we've seen in many places around the world and thereby overcoming the problems that these terrorists have in in jurisdictions such as it should be said in the u.k. where getting farms is more difficult or where the manufacture of explosives means

comes kind of conspiracy some kind of communication with others which then your plot being intercepted by the security services and so as these attacks of the synopsis of evolved over the years of course inevitably they've become more difficult for the security services to intercept and we see that again and again in most recent cases and that's particular of course you've got lone actors as may be the instance that we've seen in moscow today. speaking to security analyst a former u.k. . thank you. now earlier i spoke to geo political analyst and consultants run the right for sue speaking more generally about terrorism around the world he told us that european countries and russia should leave behind political bickering and join forces in the fight against terrorism. the fact that they have made their strike against the fs the headquarters is really alarming because it shows that they are so self

confident that the russian government the russian state that it's very heart yeah this is an alarming signal and we have to admit there our inner city our goal or a goal to such incidents in the problem of those terrorist attacks cities just as much as london paris brussels berlin and moscow face together we are united and in the consequence we should also unite politically. yeah bridge this divide which is politically made between let's say east and west russia and the european union because we both face the same problems a former head of the u.k.'s national counterterrorism security office chris phillips believes an important part of the fight against terrorism is preventing

the attackers from getting publicity. so a slightly different terrorist attack and we've seen recently most terrorist attacks over the last 5 or 6 years have been aimed principally at the public the public have been the target killing as many innocent people as most of you know this was very very different in the not only was a man with a machine gun probably in a k 47 i don't know but probably a mean directly and the headquarters of one of the probably if not the most guarded location in moscow and what that means is that maybe it wasn't. maybe this was someone with a grudge maybe this was someone that feels that they've been badly treated all that will have to come out in the photos and so on but of course what we've seen here is an individual being killed in most certainly someone standing on the gate and that's most dangerous place to be in. these sort of locations but an attack on the most defended place in moscow is never going to turn out very well but it's and

there's no doubt that the drumbeat of terrorist type incidents are increasing knows more and more people we know wrested this whether it's alright islamic terrorism or whatever these sort of incidents are taking place much more often but of course most of that the multiplier boy the civilian journalist with the the i phones and the and the bits which which is macon georgia school class very quickly and i think possibly part of the media and the way we go forward with this is to not give the people themselves any publicist city obviously you're going to report issued with a choice we're going to talk about what's happening can we stop them in the future but actually not giving the oxygen of publicity to the people are doing it so that they will most remain nameless in history. that so artie's around kosar of who's at the scene of the shooting there in central moscow or amman just describe the scene for us. well

it's so much shot call me here in the center of moscow at the moment earth is 0 our earlier broadcasts we saw that there was plenty of police presence here the national guard but right now. you can see that said there is a there are fewer police cars fewer law enforcement and the situation has normalized just a few words about so where we are this is the heart of the russian capital of the famous. street which was made to a popular jury of the people world cup in the summer of 20 easy majestic. meters away from one of our rushes. oldest and biggest a choice stores is also right across the street here russian the kremlin is about 500 meters away as so is the russian parliament russian presidential administration building is also right here still.