The Hindu : Commandos storm Moscow theatre

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 27, 2002

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Commandos storm Moscow theatre

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW OCT. 26. About 90 hostages died and over 700 were rescued when security forces on Saturday morning stormed the theatre held by Chechen gunmen for three days in Moscow.

In a lightning pre-dawn assault, the forces killed 50 terrorists, including their leader, Movsar Barayev, and 18 women, and captured two gunmen alive, a police spokesman told reporters today.

He said some of the gunmen could have escaped mingling with the hostages. An estimated 50 gunmen had stormed the theatre in the middle of a musical on Wednesday night.

Commandos used sleeping gas to neutralise the terrorists and prevent them from detonating the numerous explosives set up inside the theatre building.

There were no casualties among the security forces and only one commando was wounded. Officials described the operation as a "brilliant success".

The decision to storm the theatre was taken after the captors started executing hostages and some hostages tried to break out in the early hours of Saturday, the First Deputy Interior Minister, Vladimir Vasiliyev said.

The terrorists had on Friday threatened to start shooting hostages if their demand to stop the war in Chechnya was not immediately met.

The gunmen killed at least two hostages and wounded two more at around 5 a.m., according to the Deputy Interior Minister, following which the commandos stormed the building.

Television cameras allowed inside the theatre shortly after the raid showed the auditorium and corridors strewn with the killed terrorists, some of them with apparent explosive devices strapped to their bodies.

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who had taken a hard line on the terrorists from the very beginning of the crisis, visited a Moscow hospital and talked to the released hostages.

PTI reports:

Mr. Vasiliyev, who was one of the key members of the crisis management group, said the security forces blew up a wall to enter the besieged building and quickly took control of the ground floor. ``the rest was a matter of technique''. The actual operation lasted only 10-15 minutes and evacuation of over 750 hostages was completed within 40 minutes to press de-mining experts into action.

Quoting FSB sources Interfax and ITAR-TASS reported that the Chechen terrorists had links not only with their leaders in Chechnya and other countries, but also with a number of foreign embassies in Moscow, and that the matter would be taken up with them by the Foreign Ministry. However, no embassies were identified by the agencies.

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