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.
Looks like the Muslims will trade Russian citizens for important Russian-held Chechyen high-ranking Islamic prisoners.
Once the suicide-terrorists have what they want, the theatre will most likely detonate.
This Babelfish version is from the terrorist website a few minutes ago.
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Akhmad Kadyrov is the head of the Chechen administration, installed and supported by Russia.
Unless the are start digging up hundreds of dead bodies which is I fail to see how in the short term it is a bigger story.
Three Brittish citizens are among the hostages.
15 more children have been freed.
Putin cancels trip to Germany.
Nearby buildings are prepared to be evacuated.
About 30 to 50 armed Chechens seized a Moscow theater Wednesday night and took an audience of some 700 people hostage, FSB officials and witnesses said. The Chechens demanded that federal troops pull out of Chechnya immediately, witnesses said. Interfax and Russian television, citing rebel web site Kavkaz.org, reported the attackers belong to a group headed by Movsar Barayev, a nephew of slain Chechen field commander Arbi Barayev. The web site could no longer be accessed in Moscow late Wednesday night.
Movsar Barayev has been reported killed several times during the ongoing Chechnya military campaign, most recently 10 days ago during Russian bombing raids. Barayev was quoted by kavkaz.org as saying that the gunmen arrived in Moscow "to die, not survive" and that 40 Chechen widows are participating in the attack, Interfax reported.
A hostage released at 1 a.m. said there were a number of women among the attackers.
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, the State Duma deputy from Chechnya, entered the theater late Wednesday night to negotiate with the attackers. . . .
* * *
The gunmen were laying mines in the theater, according to relatives of those trapped inside. Spectators were allowed to use their cellphones to call their families for a few hours after the gunmen seized the theater at 9 p.m. An Interfax reporter attending the musical said the men claimed to have wired the building with explosives and were calling themselves "the suicide troops from the 29th Division."
Scores of police and elite Alpha troops sealed off the building and nearby streets by 10:30 p.m. as they put operation "Thunderstorm" into action. Parked around the theater were at least two armored personnel carriers, 20 police cars, five fire trucks and a handful of ambulances. A cold drizzle was falling, and power was cut to lights around the theater, leaving the area dark. By 1 a.m., about 150 spectators had been released or escaped from the building, TVS television reported, citing Moscow police. The channel said two Germans, a father and daughter, remained inside.A Moscow Times reporter saw a dozen troops in riot gear and carrying rifles run up to the theater at about midnight. Ekho Moskvy radio reported that the troops penetrated the building but then retreated.
TVS said the hostage-takers had threatened to kill 10 spectators for every [??????] Members of the Chechen diaspora said they were ready to offer themselves as hostages, according to Russian television.
There were no reports of casualties at 1 a.m.
Radio Mayak quoted a source with the Moscow rescue services as saying that the gunmen had shot and thrown a grenade at a special forces group. The special forces had managed to build a ladder outside the building to help rescue actors from dressing rooms. The gunmen seized the theater just as the second act began, shooting automatic weapons into the air, said a "Nord-Ost" costume designer who managed to escape with a group of her colleagues through a third-floor window.
* * *
Local media said children, Muslims and foreigners who could show their passports were allowed to leave the building. The reports could not be confirmed.
President Vladimir Putin called an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and other top officials in the Kremlin.
Alexei Volin, the deputy head of Kasyanov's administration, told Ekho Moskvy that it was important to negotiate with the gunmen but not to give them any concessions. He said the FSB had made contact with the gunmen. . . .
I just received this in an e-mail this evening -- I haven;t had a chance to check it out (i.e. it could be completely and thoroughly bogus, even a marketing ploy by one of these companies!):
Citgo, Sunoco, Conoco, Sinclair, BP/Phillips, Hess
Earlier reports in this thread indicate a number of women were also involved in the hostage-taking.
So who here believes anything the press reports?
A purely sophistical distinction. King George III could also have consoled himself with the fact that Great Britain was not at war with all American colonists--only about 12%. Louis XVI might have consoled the Little Shepardess with the news that the revolutionaries constituted less than 12% of the French population.
How did a tiny Arab tribe whose leader probably never actually existed manage to get a huge portion of the globe to protrate themselves five times a day towards the city that this mythological figure first conquered? Great, beautiful, sophisticated, ancient civilizations; all of them gone even from memory now--eradicated like the Budhist monuments in Afghanistan; their descendants part of a mass monoculture.
The Hadith gives a pretty frank indication of how they did it. When they were flush the activist vanguard--the 10 to 12% that moves all events in human history--went out to conquer. Sometimes they had fifth columnist help from dissatisfied minorites in the societies which they gutted.
The mohammedan world is in the money again because the West is totally dependant upon oil. The jihadist vangurd also smells an opening. The 300 year civil war in Western civilization has bled it dry. Western "Elites" are saprophytes feeding on the decay. Christians in the USA care about gas prices for their three cars, not about Hindus in Kasmir or Slaves in Sudan. Further the US government has been one of the main sponsors of this round of jihad--believing that they could ride this tiger and avoid the fate of the young lady from Niger.
Further, trans-national captialism has a great deal of affection for "islamic" culture. It keeps the peons out of their hair.
I prefer Barbra Strident.
I prefer "Barbra Strident." (That should have been in quotes -- I Do Not 'prefer' Baghdad Babs to much of anything.)
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