Taxi Ploughs Into Crowd In Moscow

A taxi drove into a crowd of pedestrians near Moscow’s Red Square on Saturday, injuring seven people including two Mexicans in the city for the soccer World Cup which Russia is hosting, officials and eyewitnesses said.The incident took place as residents and visiting soccer fans thronged the centre of Moscow on a balmy summer evening, a short distance from the Kremlin.

Moscow’s traffic management authority said the taxi driver had a driver’s licence issued in
Kyrgyzstan, a mainly Muslim ex-Soviet republic. The driver, in custody, told police he had not driven into the crowd on purpose, according to a footage published on the Moscow police website.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a post on Twitter: “There was an unpleasant incident with a taxi. The driver lost control of the vehicle.”


The city’s police said they had opened a criminal investigation into a suspected violation of the traffic code.

The police said seven people were injured in the incident. Moscow city’s healthcare department said earlier that eight had been hurt and taken to hospital, of whom seven were in a satisfactory condition, while one woman was seriously hurt.