A man driving a taxi struck pedestrians on a crowded Moscow street on Saturday, injuring eight people including World Cup fans.
Graphic video captured by a security camera suggested that the incident, which took place less than a kilometre from the Kremlin, may have been intentional.
A man driving a yellow cab on Moscow’s Ilyinka Street drove on to a sidewalk and accelerated into a crowd of unsuspecting pedestrians, driving several metres with some clinging to the hood of the car before crashing into a metal pole.
There are no indications that the incident was tied to terror, but police are on high alert for attacks as the country hosts tens of thousands of foreigners for the month-long football tournament.
The man, who has been identified as a national of Kyrgyzstan, tried to flee the scene afterwards. Close to a dozen passersby ran to the car to try to detain the driver. He ran across a busy street before being tackled by members of the public.
Two Mexican citizens, both women, were injured, the Interfax news service reported. No one is reported to have died in the incident.
Russian authorities have portrayed the incident as an accident. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin in a tweet wrote that the driver “lost control of his car”. Sobyanin said that he would be monitoring the incident personally. Police said they had charged the driver with several traffic violations for the incident, but did not announce any other charges.
Russian media have published reports that the government has issued a blackout on news about crimes committed during the World Cup to maintain a positive image while so many foreigners are in the country.
Russian cities have increased security during the month of the World Cup. Transportation has been shut down in certain cities on match days, with the security measures so extreme that the city of Volgograd has declared match days as public holidays.
The press service for Moscow’s road traffic management centre told Interfax that the driver is a Kyrgyz citizen and licensed to work as a taxi driver, but not accredited to work during the World Cup.