Men Hold Moscow Audience Hostage [Reports of 1000 Hostages]

AP News ^ | OCTOBER 23, 14:03 ET

[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.

[Naspino]

Video Update from BBC.

[CARepubGal]

It was briefly mentioned on PBS but nothing like Moose and his 3 ring circus. This is a thousand times more important.

[swarthyguy]

Try this --

FYI: http://mprofaca.cro.net/mainmenu.html
Type Russia into search box and get near instant updates to situation.


Freeper Alexandria. Does have some TV stations but i try to stay away from Real.

[GirlShortstop]

Nitrous is slow ..    You need something completely pervasive and fast acting.

    Super-charge it!   </sarcasm off>     Thanks for the info.

[ET(end tyranny)]

Thanks for the info. If I understand it, that means Sinclair and Sunoco are the only ones at this point. (and perhaps not even them) but at least by buying from these two, it would severely limit money going to the ME.

[gcruse]

Got it. Thanks.

[character_matters]

My wife and I plan to fly to Moscow on Saturday to bring home our 9 month old adopted girl.
We pray for a speedy resolution to this crisis!

[swarthyguy]

Tell 'em some Americans care about the pain and agony to Mother Russia.

[AgentEcho]

Congrats on your addition and be safe.

[Aggie Mama]

9 Months is such a wonderful age. Congratulations to you and God's Blessings for a safe and speedy trip home.

[hunter112]

Wish you all the best, with everything!

An adopted child, myself.

[ProbableCause]

Stalin did in 50 million

nonsense

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

Hey, can somebody gimmie a update on this situation? FR is running slow for me....sniper story probably. Has anything new happened with the hostage situation? The last I heard was 100 terrorists had some 700-1000 people hostage

[swarthyguy]

Sorry i've been caught up in the sniper threads. Warrants all over the country....Camp in alabama....muslim converts in the US military.....

Russia, where's that?

[BurbankKarl]

24 Oct 2002 02:30
Despair, anger after Chechens seize Moscow theatre

---

By Clara Ferreira-Marques

MOSCOW, Oct 24 (Reuters) - There was an ugly, despairing, angry mood on the streets of Moscow on Thursday as the grim drama of distant Chechnya thrust itself back into the homes of ordinary Muscovites with frightening suddenness.

For months, people in the capital have heard Kremlin assurances that the security situation in the far-off rebel province where so many Russian lives have been lost was gradually being brought under control.

Chechens shattered that myth on Wednesday night, storming into a packed theatre in the heart of the capital and taking hundreds of theatre-goers hostage as they enjoyed a bit of escapist fantasy in the form of a spectacular new musical.

Several hours after the drama began, scores of people, from teenagers to the elderly, stood in cold, relentless rain keeping vigil outside the theatre where their kinfolk were trapped.

"I'm cold, wet and scared," said Julia Kushner, in her 20s, whose mother and brother had failed to show up among scores of people being released in batches by the rebels.

Kushner was one of hundreds who were herded back by police from the precincts of the theatre as Russian special forces moved in, backed by armoured personnel carriers.

Swaddled in a black hooded coat, rainwater dripping down her face, she said her mother and brother called twice on someone else's mobile phone: "Then suddenly I heard nothing more."

The last time Chechnya seemed so close to most Muscovites was in the summer of 1999 when over 160 died as mysterious blasts brought down two entire apartment blocks in the city.

The Kremlin blamed the Chechens, despite denials by rebel leaders, and launched a second war on the mainly Muslim region, three years after a humiliating defeat in the 1994-96 conflict.


TURNING TO PUTIN

A moustachioed man in his 50s who gave his name as Alexander vented his anger at Vladimir Putin, whose hard line on Chechnya as prime minister in 1999 helped catapult him to the presidency.

"I wish that Putin, instead of dealing with sports matters, would restore order in the centre of Moscow," Alexander said, referring to the 50-year-old president's regular exhortations to Muscovites to concentrate on their physical fitness.

Every time senior officials, appeared a ripple of expectancy ran through the scores waiting for news of their loved ones.

One woman who thrust aside television camera stands to rush up to one official broke down in tears when she found the person she was looking for was not on a list of those freed.

The crowds derived some comfort from reports that those inside were not being mistreated by their captors, though the knowledge that the rebel gang had explosives spread alarm.

Nerves were at breaking point.

One grandfather shouted out at a police officer: "Is this going to be a second Budennovsk?" In 1995, 120 died when Chechens raided a hospital in the southern Russian town.

"When are you going to get these bastards out of Moscow?"

Chechens, who fought bitter mountain wars in the 19th century against the armies of the tsars, have long been viewed with a mixture of fear and mistrust by many Russians.

A man close to tears told Reuters: "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. The theatre seats about 1,000.

A distraught woman in her 60s said her daughter and two grand-daughters were at the show 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 woman struggled to get through a police cordon: "Let me through. Let me through. My children are inside."

[Naspino]

I have not been this mad since 9/11. Its like the WTC being hit and collapsing and turning on the TV to look at a tree stump for SIX hours while some knuckleheads debate its meaning.

Its sad that millions of Americans have to be left in the dark about events like this. The sniper case has no meaning in the context of our future. Whats happening in Russia tonight could change the course of history.

[fso301]

Release a big pack of attack dogs.

[swarthyguy]

Shoot its muslims. A bunch of yipping yapping mini poodles will do.

[BurbankKarl]

AFP [ THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2002 04:44:38 AM ]

MOSCOW: The deputy who represents Chechnya in the state Duma lower house of Parliament spoke by telephone early on Thursday with the head of an armed Chechen group holding hundreds of people hostage in a Moscow theatre to try and secure their release.

The lawmaker Aslanbek Aslakhanov did not manage to reach any agreement with the Chechen rebel leader Movsar Barayev, the Interfax news agency reported, quoting police sources.


Aslakhanov earlier tried to enter the theatre in southern Moscow where between 600 and 1,000 hostages are being held, accompanied by fellow-Chechen Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former speaker of Parliament.


Kremlin aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky, quoted by TVS television, said that both men had experience of negotiating in hostage dramas.


Some 40 to 50 armed Chechens took theatre-goers hostage late Wednesday during a performance of a musical comedy called "Nord-Ost," one of the city's most popular shows.


Demanding an end to the war in the breakaway Russian province of Chechnya, they threatened to blow up the building if security forces tried to storm it. Aslakhanov urged the hostage-takers to let their hostages go.


"I want to appeal to those who have taken these hostages, that they realise what they have done, that it is going to harm the Chechens themselves," he said in comments broadcast on Channel One television.


"The heaviest consequences will be for the Chechens," said the lawmaker, warning of a backlash against Moscow's ethnic Chechen diaspora.


"Khasbulatov and I are ready to enter into contact with them to talk about the situation. I, as a deputy from Chechnya, will do all I can to end the war in Chechnya through political means," he added.


Chechen religious leader, Mufti Akhmad Shamayev, who also came to the hostage scene, called on the rebels to release the women and children and "accept dialogue."


"I very much regret these events and I present my excuses, as Chechen mufti, to all those affected by the hostage-taking. These terrorists have no nation, they have nothing," he told Channel One

[GirlShortstop]

"The struggle for existence in Wartime Russia was reflected by children's attempt to survive on rations of 700 calories per day, by women selling sex or anything they had for morsels of bread. Russians gave up their youngest sons (early teens) to die on the battlefronts and then also had to worry about Stalinques purges of anyone thought to be anti-Soviet that led to millions being executed and sent to gulags."      Russian War ^

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