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Armed Chechens Seize
Hundreds In Moscow Theater

By Maria Golovnina and Oliver Bullough
10-23-2


MOSCOW (Reuters) - About 40 Chechen guerrillas armed with guns and grenades held hundreds of Moscow theater-goers hostage on Wednesday night, threatening to blow up the building if police tried to storm it.
 
Some hostages who were freed said the group, including several women with some wearing masks and strapped with explosives, burst into the theater in southeast Moscow firing shots into the ceiling and shouting "Stop the war in Chechnya."
 
Moscow city police chief spokesman Valery Gribakin told the state-run Rossiya television channel that according to released hostages the gang was demanding that authorities "resolve the situation in the Chechen republic."
 
"They have grenades and they have guns," Gribakin said. "We are trying to establish contact with them."
 
Russia has been fighting on and off for more than eight years to quell a separatist rebellion in the North Caucasus territory that is still costing lives daily among Russian troops and civilians.
 
Several shooting incidents were reported in different parts of the five-story theater after the gang burst in during the second act of the musical "North-East."
 
But there was no immediate word on casualties in the theater, a bland modern building known as the former House of Culture in Melnikov Street, in southeast Moscow.
 
The group released up to 20 children immediately from among the audience as well as some Muslims. Police said 400-700 people remained hostage while some 150 had been released.
 
STRAPPED EXPLOSIVES
 
One witness said the guerrillas had strapped explosives to the internal supporting columns of the theater to prepare to carry out their threat to blow up the building if stormed by police.
 
An anguished hostage, speaking by mobile telephone from inside the theater, pleaded live on NTV television for the security forces not to storm the building.
 
"Please to not start storming. There are a lot of explosives. Don't open fire on them. I am very scared, I ask you please do not start attacking," said Tatyana Solnyshkina.
 
As hundreds of heavily-armed special forces and police took up position around the theater, President Vladimir Putin rushed to the Kremlin for a crisis meeting with senior security chiefs and his Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
 
The Moscow hostage-taking incident would be the most audacious such attack carried out by Chechens since the first Chechen war of 1994 to 1996.
 
In 1995 some 120 people were killed after rebels seized a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk. In 1996 a Chechen group took more than 2,000 people hostage in a raid on the Dagestani town of Kizlyar.
 
The attack is an acute embarrassment for Putin who has struggled to convince the world that the security situation in Chechnya was stabilizing.
 
He was due to leave on Thursday for trips to Germany and Portugal and then go on to high-level talks in Mexico with President Bush on Iraq and North Korea.
 
"STOP THE WAR"
 
A student called Alexei, who was among those immediately released, told reporters the group who burst in shouted out: "Release Chechnya and Russia from Russians. Stop the war in Chechnya."
 
Another teenager released, Denis Afanasyev, told Russian television that the armed gang wanted "the war to be stopped," a clear reference to the protracted secessionist war in Russia's seething Chechnya province.
 
The man who led the group into the theater first fired a burst of bullets into the ceiling.
 
"He told all the actors to sit down on the front rows. Then women and men came in with masks.
 
"Some women were strapped with explosives and they said they would blow up the whole building in 10 minutes if they (police) started to storm the building," Afanasyev said.
 
GUNSHOTS HEARD
 
A Reuters reporter close to the theater said he had heard four to five gunshots near the building. Other reports said the shots came from inside the theater.
 
Police marksmen took up position on rooftops and other vantage points overlooking the theater.
 
Afanasyev said that the initial assault by the hostage-takers was followed by sporadic shooting in a corner of the main hall, on one of the balconies and behind the stage.
 
Police cleared neighboring buildings, as a security cordon was thrown up around the area. A city bus blocked off traffic while police cars closed off sidestreets to all traffic except ambulances.
 
Around 50 police were on the scene, some marshalling a large crowd that gathered behind the police cordon.
 
A man close to tears told a Reuters correspondent on the spot: "My friend's wife is trapped inside. She said there are about 700 people trapped inside." That corresponded with the police estimate although the exact number remained unclear.
 
A distraught woman in her 60s said her daughter and two grand-daughters were inside the theater on a school trip.
 
"My daughter managed to speak to me on the phone, literally three words. Then they took their phones away. I just don't know what happened."
 
Another grandmother struggled to get through a police cordon: "Let me through. Let me through. My children are inside. Let me know if my children are on the bus," she said referring to a bus carrying children who had been released. (Additional reporting by Clara Ferreira-Marques)





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