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Gunmen take 700 hostage in Moscow theatre

MOSCOW OCT. 23. Armed men entered a crowded Moscow theatre tonight and took the audience of over 700 hostage, the Federal Security Service said. Shots were fired at one point and people in the audience said the gunmen were from Chechnya and demanded an end to Russia's war in the breakaway republic.

The theatre, a former Soviet-era House of Culture, was staging a performance of the musical ``Nord-Ost,'' one of the Russian capital's most popular productions.

ITAR-Tass reported that the armed men were laying mines inside the theatre. The report quoted a spectator who had called the police emergency number. TV6 television news quoted spectators inside as saying the attackers said they had mines on their bodies and would blow themselves up if the Russian security forces tried to storm the building.

A woman who had somehow made her way out of the theatre said in an interview broadcast live on Russia's NTV television that men wearing camouflage dress went on stage, fired in the air and said: ``Don't you understand what's going on. We are Chechens. We are not hiding it.''

Russian forces retreated from Chechnya in 1996 and returned three years later after rebel attacks on a neighbouring Russian region and after apartment house bombings blamed on the rebels killed more than 300 in Russian cities.

The Interfax news agency said one of its reporters who was inside the theatre told them by telephone that there were about 20 men in the group. Some children as well as Muslims had been allowed to leave the theatre.

Police units and an Alpha special forces unit went to the scene and sealed off the area in the freezing, wet weather. — AP

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