| Chechens Threaten to Kill 700 Moscow Hostages | ||
| Last Updated: October 24, 2002 09:48 AM ET |
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Chechen separatist guerrillas threatened to shoot or blow up 700 hostages in a Moscow theater on Thursday unless Russia pulled its troops out of their homeland. The group of about 40, including masked women with explosives strapped to their bodies, burst in on Wednesday night firing into the air and shouting "Stop the war in Chechnya." The radio station Ekho Moskvy quoted child heart specialist Maria Shkolnikova as telling it from inside the theater: "They are saying 'You have been sitting here for 10 hours and your government has done nothing to secure your release.' "The main thing is that troops must be pulled out or they will start shooting people." Earlier, Shkolnikova told Reuters, also by mobile phone: "A huge amount of explosives have been laid through the place." She said explosives had been laid in passageways and on seats and even attached to hostages themselves. Officials said some 60 foreigners were among the captives. President Vladimir Putin, who rose to power on pledges three years ago to clamp down on the decade-old rebellion on Russia's southern fringe and boost public security, said the main task was to secure the hostages' safe release. He said information from the rebels' representatives confirmed that "the terrorist act was planned abroad." Contacts with the hostage-takers appeared erratic at best. The Chechen news Web Site www.kavkaz.org reported what it said was a statement by the attackers' commander, Movsar Barayev. "There's more than a thousand people here. No one will get out of here alive and they'll die with us if there's any attempt to storm the building," the Web Site quoted him saying. He called on Putin to stop the war and pull his troops out of Chechnya if he wanted to save the hostages' lives -- demands that were confirmed by Russian officials at the scene. SOME HOSTAGES FREED The rebels freed around 150 hostages soon after taking over the theater, including up to 20 children and a number of Muslims. They released a handful more on Thursday morning including three children and a Briton in his 50s or 60s. But Iosif Kobzon, a member of parliament and entertainer who was taking part in negotiations, told Interfax news agency: "When I asked them to free others, they said they had already let the three smallest ones go and would release no one else." Another negotiator, liberal deputy Irina Khakamada, headed to the Kremlin to see Putin after meeting the guerrillas. It was not clear what message she was conveying. One Russian official said the guerrillas described themselves as a suicide death squad, or "smertniki." Police said there were up to 700 people still in the theater, a modern building about four km (three miles) southeast of the Kremlin. Austrian ambassador Franz Cede said the Western captives included Australians, Austrians, Britons, Germans and Americans. The attack presented Putin with his sternest test since becoming president more than two years ago. He has taken an uncompromising stand on the conflict in largely-Muslim Chechnya on Russia's southern fringes, where the Kremlin has twice launched military pushes to crush separatists. Western accusations of human rights abuses against civilians in the devastated province have died down since Putin threw Moscow's backing behind the U.S.-led global war on terrorism following last year's September 11 attacks in the United States. It was unclear what foreign groups Putin might be accusing. Russia has drawn attention to Arab fighters in Chechnya and accuses the rebels of links to radical Islamist groups like the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda, blamed for the September 11 attacks. But privately, Western diplomats play down any Chechen involvement by al Qaeda. SHOOTING INCIDENTS Several shooting incidents were reported in different parts of the five-storey theater after the gang burst in during the second act of the Russian musical "Nord-Ost" ("North-East"). "They have grenades and they have guns," Moscow city police chief spokesman Valery Gribakin said. But Shkolnikova said there had been no casualties when the rebels stormed the theater, a featureless modern building formerly known as House of Culture. Two reporters from the Italian news agency Ansa who were freed from the theater said the group's leader had threatened to kill 10 people an hour if his demands were not met. They quoted one of the captors as saying: "We can resist as long as we want. We are ready to die, we want an absolute end to the war and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya." Anguished hostage Tatyana Solnyshkina, speaking by mobile telephone, addressed security forces live on NTV television. "Please do 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," she said. Gennady Gutkov, a member of parliament's security committee, said: "The building will not be stormed at the initiative of the Russian side if the terrorists do not undertake actions to kill large numbers of hostages." An aide to Barayev, quoted by the Web Site, said a police officer had been killed after trying to make his way into the theater. Police would not comment. ANXIOUS RELATIVES Shkolnikova, the doctor, was allowed out of the theater briefly to read out an appeal on behalf of the hostages. "We ask President Vladimir Putin to stop military actions in Chechnya," it read. "These people are very serious, they are not going to joke and may launch terrorist acts all over Russia." Crowds of anxious relatives waited outside the theater for news. Local authorities closed all schools in the area as a precautionary measure and stepped up security at schools attended by children from Russia's various ethnic nationalities. Russia has fought on and off since 1994 to quell the revolt in Chechnya, which costs lives daily among troops and civilians. Putin's decision as a politically inexperienced prime minister in October 1999 to order troops back into Chechnya helped to catapult him into the Kremlin. His firm handling and public fighting talk made him Russia's most trusted politician. Putin called off a trip due to begin on Thursday that would have taken him to Portugal via Berlin. He also pulled out of an Asia-Pacific summit in Mexico that was likely to take in talks with President Bush on Iraq and North Korea. The Moscow hostage-taking incident is the most audacious Chechen attack 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 neighboring Dagestani town of Kizlyar |
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