As emergency services combed the scene of the Moscow concert hall attack, details of some of the victims began to emerge from officials and local media.
Most of those spotted 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 due to perform on Friday the evening.
Alexander Baklemyshev, 51, had long dreamed of seeing the band, his son told local media, and had traveled alone from his hometown of Satka, about 1,000 miles east of Moscow, for the concert.
His son, Maxim, told Russian news agency MSK1 that his father had sent him a video from the concert hall before the attack. That was the last he heard from his father.
“There was no final discussion,” his son said. “All that’s left is the video and nothing else.”
Irina Okisheva and her husband, Pavel Okishev, also traveled hundreds of miles to attend the concert – starting in Kirov, north-east of Moscow. Mr. Okishev had received the tickets as an early birthday present. He was due to turn 35 next week, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported. Both he and his wife died in the attack, the newspaper said.
“Very painful and scary,” Ms Okisheva’s colleagues wrote on a social media page for a photography studio where she worked. “The whole studio team is horrified by what happened.”
Anastasiya Volkova lost both her parents in the attack. She told 5 TV she had missed a call from her mother on Friday night around the time of the attack. When she called, there was no answer, Ms. Volkova said.
“I couldn’t answer the phone. I didn’t hear the call,” Ms Volkova told the broadcaster, adding that her mother was “really looking forward to this concert”.
As the death toll rose to 133 people, the Ministry of Health of the Moscow region published a preliminary list of the victims. It had 41 names. Andrey Rudnitsky was one of them.
A forward in an amateur hockey league, he turned 39 last week, according to his page on the league’s website. Mr Rudnitsky’s teammates told Pro Gorod, a local news website, that he had moved to Moscow last year from Yaroslavl but planned to return home to play there. Mr. Rudnitsky had two children.
42-year-old Ekaterina Novoselova was also on the list. Ms Novoselova won a beauty pageant in 2001 in her hometown of Tver, 110 miles northwest of Moscow, one of the pageant’s organizers told local news agency TIA. She said she had moved to Moscow to work as a lawyer and was survived by her husband and two children.
Some people appeared to be named by mistake. Yevgeniya Ryumina, 38, told Komsomolskaya Pravda that she left the concert hall for safety. But she had lost her identity, Ms Ryumina said, suggesting that this may have led to the confusion.
