- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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."
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- "They have grenades and they have guns," Gribakin
said. "We are trying to establish contact with them."
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- STRAPPED EXPLOSIVES
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- The attack is an acute embarrassment for Putin who has
struggled to convince the world that the security situation in Chechnya
was stabilizing.
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- 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.
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- "STOP THE WAR"
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- The man who led the group into the theater first fired
a burst of bullets into the ceiling.
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- "He told all the actors to sit down on the front
rows. Then women and men came in with masks.
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- "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.
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- GUNSHOTS HEARD
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- 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.
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- Police marksmen took up position on rooftops and other
vantage points overlooking the theater.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Around 50 police were on the scene, some marshalling
a large crowd that gathered behind the police cordon.
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- 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.
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- A distraught woman in her 60s said her daughter and two
grand-daughters were inside the theater on a school trip.
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- "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."
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- 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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