MOSCOW – As emergency services combed the scene of the attack on March 22 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 travelled from other parts of the country to attend the concert at Crocus City Hall, where Piknik, a Russian rock band formed in the late 1970s, was slated to perform on the night of March 22.

Mr Alexander Baklemyshev, 51, had long dreamt about seeing the band, his son told local media, and had travelled solo from his home city of Satka, some 1,600km east of Moscow, for the concert.

Mr Pavel Okishev and his wife, Ms Irina Okisheva, also travelled hundreds of kilometres to attend the concert – making their way from Kirov, north-east of Moscow. Mr Okishev had received the tickets as an early birthday present. He was due to turn 35 next week, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported. It said both he and his wife died in the attack.

“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.”

Ms Anastasiya Volkova lost both of her parents in the attack. She told 5 TV that she had missed a call from her mother on March 22 at around the time of the attack.

When she called back, there was no response, Ms Volkova said.

“I couldn’t answer the phone. I didn’t hear the call,” Ms Volkova told the broadcaster, adding that her mother had been “really looking forward to this concert”.

As the death toll climbed to 133 people, the Moscow region’s Healthcare Ministry published a preliminary list of victims. It had 41 names; Mr 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 local news website Pro Gorod that he had moved to Moscow in 2023 from Yaroslavl but planned to return home to play there. Mr Rudnitsky had two children.

Ms Ekaterina Novoselova, 42, was also on the list of names from the ministry. She had won a beauty pageant in 2001 in her home city of Tver, 177km north-west of Moscow, one of the pageant’s organisers told local news outlet TIA. It reported that she had moved to Moscow to work as a lawyer and is survived by her husband and two children.

Some people appeared to have been named by mistake.

Ms Yevgeniya Ryumina, 38, told Komsomolskaya Pravda that she had fled the concert hall to safety. But she had lost her identity card, Ms Ryumina said, suggesting that might have led to confusion. NYTIMES