Russian police have identified the man who opened fire at the Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters in Moscow as a 39-year-old loner and gun enthusiast.
They named him as Yevgeny Manyurov from Podolsk, about 40km (25 miles) south of Moscow. He killed an FSB officer and wounded five others with an automatic weapon, before a sniper shot him dead.
One of the wounded is a civilian.
At the Kremlin, a couple of kilometres away, President Vladimir Putin was at a gala evening honouring the FSB.
The details about the gunman were reported by Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Friday, citing police sources.
The shooting happened at the entrance of the Lubyanka, the FSB headquarters which used to house the Soviet KGB.
On Thursday night police searched Manyurov’s flat, which he had shared with his mother, and they detained her for questioning.
Her son had worked as a security guard but lost his job recently and never had any visits from friends, Russian media quote her as saying. Police found five guns at the flat – legally registered and kept in a safe – along with a large quantity of ammunition.
Manyurov once trained as a lawyer and did some legal consulting work, reports say.
He practised shooting regularly at a gun club, which was a passion for him, his mother is quoted as saying.
She also said she had heard him speaking English on the phone with some “Arabs”, who had started calling him since he had lost his security job.
When he opened fire, Manyurov “was shouting slogans typical of Islamic State”, the daily Kommersant reports. It says the information came from a security source, who quoted witnesses questioned by police.
