"Crocus City Hall". Terrorist Attack in Moscow

We were on the balcony, upstairs. There were about 10 minutes left before the concert was to begin, and many people had already gathered, 70 percent of the hall was filled. At some moment, we heard what seemed to me like the sounds of fireworks. And my friend, who was with me at the concert, also said, "Fireworks, really?" And after that, we saw people moving in a crowd near the bottom of the hall, closer to the stage, like a train. I didn’t understand what it was.
After that, the "fireworks" sounds became even louder and closer, huge panic began in the hall, people started to run in different directions, but bumped into each other, there was no evacuation. Then the shooting started already inside the concert hall, at the bottom, on the left side of the stage, I saw a line of fire moving through the people. Everyone started to lie down [on the floor], we began to lie on top of each other in the aisle, we started to coordinate the crowd to move forward. Meanwhile, we understood that people with rifles could enter through any door, and tried to move towards the nearest exit upstairs. Slowly, in a line, crawling, forward, upstairs we crawled out [of the hall]. And started to get out [of "Crocus City Hall"].

Somewhere, the sounds of gunfire were still audible, it was absolutely unsafe to run there. We ran to the technical part of "Crocus", towards the balconies. And we just bumped into different closed doors, people were panicking, some were crying, some were calling their families, some were waiting for an elevator that didn’t work. In short, we found ourselves in a large dark room. When we were getting out, the fire had already started — we could smell the smoke and burning. [It took us about 20-25 minutes to get out]. That is, the fire started within the first 15 minutes after the attack. Eventually, we found some technical staircase, we had to break the door because all doors were locked everywhere. Outside, everyone started to run in different directions, and by that time, I saw huge plumes of smoke. Running past the front part of "Crocus", I saw people running and banging on the windows, not knowing how to get out, because all other doors were locked.

About the attackers: it was definitely a group of people, there were many automatic bursts. They were either in brown clothing or in brown vests. We were on the balcony, and the shooters were near the stage — quite far from us. And there were specifically automatic bursts through the crowd of people — and they were moving from the entrance to the hall along the parterre towards the stage, driving people into the center of the hall.