Taxi plows into World Cup crowd in Moscow, 8 injured.

The taxi cab in question. Reuters. 

A taxi has plowed into a World Cup crowd in Moscow, injuring 8 people. Reuters. The taxi driver had a licence from Kyrgyzstan, a Muslim majority ex-Soviet country. However, the driver and police claim that the incident was an accident. The driver fled from the accident after bystanders tried to apprehend him. The man said he had been up working for 20 hours and that he had hit the accelerator instead of the brake. He fled the scene because he though the would have been killed by the crowd. 

Video of the incident can be seen below but be aware it is semi-graphic. 

Наезд такси в Москве.. жесть какая-то. pic.twitter.com/09XTwbZNPw

— Борисыч (@Borisich_glass) June 16, 2018

My Comment:
I'm conflicted about this incident. On the one hand there is a very good chance that the driver was telling the truth and this was nothing more than a tragic accident. Such accidents can and do happen and the fact that he is a Muslim shouldn't have much to do with it.

On the other, someone sees a Muslim man ramming into a crowd of people it's easy to understand why people think it is on purpose. We have all seen ramming attacks the last couple of years. It has become a very common method of attack. Hundreds of people have died in vehicle ramming attacks and the vast majority of them have been done in the name of Jihad.

And it's not like Russia doesn't have a major reason to cover it up. Though I don't care about soccer at all, the World Cup is a huge deal and hosting it is a big deal for Russia. They get a lot of prestige and respect for doing so and all of that goes out the window if they can't keep their guests safe. If this was a deliberate attack, they have a major reason to lie about it.

Either way though, this driver was very lucky he was able to escape. The video posted above makes it very clear that he was about to get killed. At least one guy was punching him in the face and quite a few more attempted to tackle him. The Russians don't mess around with this kind of thing and probably would have beaten this man pretty badly at best had he not run away.

So do I think this is an accident or a terror attack? My guess is that it really is a tragic accident. Generally speaking, terrorists do not lie about committing their attacks. They want everyone to know what they did and why they did it. They don't lie and say it was an accident or a mistake. Doing so eliminated the very purpose of a terror attack in the first place.

And though Russia has a reason to lie about the attack, doing so isn't really in their playbook. Russia isn't as politically correct as other European countries and are less likely to be apologetic to Muslims attackers. Indeed, I think the only reason it was brought up in the first place is because American media is biased against Russia and want to see them embarrassed.

Thankfully, nobody was killed in this incident and only one person was seriously hurt. Either way that's a good outcome for both a terror attack or a major accident.