RUSSIA: SPECIAL FORCES STORM THEATRE WHERE CHECHEN REBELS WERE HOLDING HUNDREDS OF HOSTAGES LEAVING AT LEAST 90 HOSTAGES DEAD
Record ID:
640641
RUSSIA: SPECIAL FORCES STORM THEATRE WHERE CHECHEN REBELS WERE HOLDING HUNDREDS OF HOSTAGES LEAVING AT LEAST 90 HOSTAGES DEAD
- Title: RUSSIA: SPECIAL FORCES STORM THEATRE WHERE CHECHEN REBELS WERE HOLDING HUNDREDS OF HOSTAGES LEAVING AT LEAST 90 HOSTAGES DEAD
- Date: 27th October 2002
- Summary: (W2) MOSCOW, RUSSIA (OCTOBER 26, 2002) (REUTERS) SLV RUSSIAN SECURITY FORCES PREPARING TO ENTER THEATRE / SOUND OF EXPLOSIONS; SLV TROOPS MOVING; SLV TROOPS CROUCHED DOWN (5 SHOTS)
- Embargoed: 11th November 2002 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: MOSCOW, RUSSIA
- Country: Russia
- Topics: Crime,General,Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA6YWCV5UCEAB45UB21NB6VP1NV
- Story Text: Russian special forces have stormed a besieged Moscow theatre in a dawn raid that left at least 90 hostages dead along with most of their Chechen captors.
There was confirmation that television pictures showing a dead body lying in a pool of blood in the theatre, was that of Movsar Barayev, the leader of the rebels.
Movsar Barayev was confirmed dead on Saturday (October 26, 2002) by Russian security services, along with 34 of his colleagues.
More than 750 other hostages, held since Wednesday (October 23) by the heavily armed Muslim guerrillas, were rescued early on Saturday morning, including all the children.
Nearly all the rebels were killed, many of them possibly immobilised by a knockout gas before troops moved in.
A doctor from Moscow's main emergency hospital said he was treating 42 patients for gas poisoning, supporting reports that security forces had pumped knockout fumes into the theatre.
Officials said troops forced their way into the theatre after rebels, some women with explosives wrapped around them, executed two male hostages to press their demand that Russia pull its troops out of their separatist southern homeland.
A woman hostage was killed earlier in the siege while trying to escape. Officials gave no details of other dead hostages, but Australian and British diplomats said they had been told none of the estimated 75 foreign captives were among them.
The end of the drama, which brought the distant Chechen war to his Kremlin doorstep, will be a relief to President Vladimir Putin whose own position was being tested by the crisis.
A senior envoy to Chechnya's separatist rebel president condemned the actions of the radical guerrilla faction.
"We said from the beginning, these are not our methods,"
Akhmed Zakayev, an envoy of Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, told Reuters by telephone from Denmark.
Zakayev represented the Chechen leadership at the only round of talks to be held during Russia's second post-Soviet military campaign in the region which began three years ago.
The guerrilla commander, Movsar Barayev, was among those killed in an assault that the government's Vasilyev said had prevented a massacre among the theatre-goers.
The captives had been indulging a new Moscow craze for grandiose, Western-style musicals. Replete after the interval with caviar and Russian champagne, they had been watching "Nord-Ost" (North-East) -- about a Russian Arctic explorer.
By Saturday morning, the red plush theatre seats were empty, except for a few black-clad bodies of dead Chechen guerrillas.
One, a woman, was slumped back in a chair with her mouth gaping open, a bag of explosives tied to her front.
In freezing rain, the hostages were ferried quickly out of the theatre, many to hospital and away from waiting journalists.
The Muslim rebels, who had rigged up explosives throughout the building, had threatened to start killing their hostages early on Saturday if they did not see evidence their demands that Moscow's troops pull out of Chechnya were being met.
The guerrillas' daring raid had set Putin the toughest test of his two and a half years in the Kremlin.
His startling rise to the presidency was largely based on his sending troops back into Chechnya in 1999 after a three-year absence, a popular move which earned him a reputation as a tough and effective leader.
Humiliated by the audacious rebel attack, Putin went on national television on Friday (October 25) evening to say he was open to talks with Chechen guerrillas, but under his terms.
He insisted that past conditions stood, notably that separatists lay down their weapons. Moscow also rejects any idea of independence for Chechnya, which Russian troops first invaded to crush a separatist movement in December 1994.
Putin links Russia's conflict in Chechnya to the U.S.-led global war on terrorism, which he enthusiastically backed after last year's September 11 attacks on the United States.
The siege and its closeness to the heart of Russia is bound to raise new questions over how the Kremlin should deal with the protracted secessionist war in the tiny North Caucasus region.
Though Putin won over voters with his hardline approach, many question whether it is succeeding and point to a series of humiliations of the military by Chechen rebels in recent months. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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