Posted on 10/23/2002 11:12:47 AM PDT by McGruff
MOSCOW (AP) — Armed men entered a Moscow theater Wednesday and took the audience hostage, the Federal Security Service said.
The theater was holding a performance of the musical Nord-Ost, one of the Russian capital's most popular productions.
The Interfax news agency said one of its reporters was inside the theater at the time of the raid. She told them in a telephone call that the men had fired into the air and were preventing the audience from leaving, the agency said.
Police units were on their way to the scene.
Gunmen Take Moscow Audience Hostage
Wednesday October 23, 2002 11:40 PM
MOSCOW (AP) - About 50 armed Chechen rebels stormed a crowded Moscow theater during a musical show Wednesday night and took hundreds of audience members hostage. Police and security forces surrounded the building amid sporadic gunfire.
Moscow police spokesman Valery Gribakin said about 100 women and children had been let out of the theater.
``The terrorists are demanding one thing - the end to the war in Chechnya,'' Gribakin said.
Russian news reports said the armed men and women were laying land mines inside the theater and had explosives strapped to their bodies which they threatened to blow up if Russian security forces stormed the building.
A woman who made her way out of the theater told a television interviewer the men wore camouflage as they took the stage, fired into the air and said: ``Don't you understand what's going on? We are Chechens.''
News reports said the hostage-takers arrived in jeep-like vehicles just as the second act of the play was about to begin. When police and security forces surrounded the theater, the attackers opened fired and threw a grenade. One of the hostages, a doctor, was treating a hostage-taker who was wounded.
Russia is involved in a bloody war in Chechnya, seeking to put down a decade-old separatist insurrection in the oil-rich region. News reports cited a Chechen rebel Web site as saying the group was led by Movsar Barayev, the nephew of warlord Arbi Barayev, who was reportedly killed last year.
Senior Russian officials had no immediate comment on the hostage taking which, in an unprecedented move, was being broadcast live from outside the theater on radio and television.
The news reports said Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a member of the national parliament from Chechnya, was inside the theater and negotiating.
The Chechens are a small group of Muslims in north Caucasus Mountains in southern Russian. They are among the fiercest national groups in the country and battled the Russian Czars in the 19th century before being finally defeated.
They were deported en masse by Stalin to Kazakhstan in 1944 for allegedly betraying the Soviet Union and supporting Hitler. They were allowed to return to their homes in 1957. The Chechens declared independence from the Soviet Union shortly before it collapsed in 1991, but Russian forces subsequently invaded the region trying to put down the rebellion.
Slain Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev helped force Russia to the negotiating table by leading a bloody raid on the town of Budyonnovsk in a neighboring Russian region in June 1995. His fighters briefly took more than 1,000 hostages and then escaped back into Chechnya. More than 100 civilians died.
Russian forces left Chechnya in 1996 after the disastrous two-year war but returned in 1999 after rebels raided a neighboring region and Russian authorities blamed rebels for a series of apartment bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people.
In a January 1996 raid on the southern Russian town of Kizlyar, rebels took hundreds of hostages at a local hospital. Some 78 people were killed.
Russia media reported about 700 people were inside the theater. The report could not be immediately confirmed. An Associated Press reporter saw two ambulances, but it was unclear what connection they had to events in the theater.
Uh, no. Georgia aids chechens. Did they let Ukranians out?
And I trust that there's enough non-Christians to turn the launch keys, if that's a problem.
All he did was ask for a cite. We sure would
like to see a cite for the outpouring of support
you mention.
So -- they are not all widows of rebels? And they released women and children not muslims and children?
Oh, you are so right. I've never heard it phrased better. Damn us.
Ah... that explains much. You are a fount of information. Thank you.
I can name one. The crown prince of Saudi Arabia gave the victim's families the rights to a race horse but not the studding rights -- that'd be insane.
And don't forget asking them if the reason they hate us so is because Bush stole the election from Gore.
I hope he gets voted off this week.
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