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sniper on Thursday targeting the front entrance to the theater
where hundreds of people were taken hostage during "Nord Ost."
One woman was found dead and eight hostages including three
children got out of the theater where about 50 Chechen separatists
kept hundreds of people hostage for a second day Thursday in one
of the most dramatic crises the country has ever seen.
Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko, who met
with
reporters near the blocked-off zone around the theater, said Thursday
afternoon that a 20-year-old woman was the only confirmed victim
and she
appeared to have been killed Wednesday night.
Television footage showed the body of the unidentified woman
being
carried out of the theater by Jordanian doctors, who were admitted
after the
Chechens said only non-Russian doctors would be allowed in. Negotiators
had
asked to be allowed to send in doctors.
Ignatchenko said the dead woman had been shot in the chest.
He said
her fingers were burned by gunpowder and broken.
One of the Jordanian doctors, Zake Ahmad, said there were about
800
hostages, including about 30 children, inside. "There are
too many children
there. The hostages are in need of medicine, food and medical
assistance,"
Ahmad told Interfax. He returned to the theater after bringing
out the body
and spent several hours inside assisting the hostages.
"The condition of people is almost calm. Their attitude
is almost
normal," he said.
At about 5 p.m., the hostage-takers lobbed grenades at two women
who
managed to escape. Two explosions were heard outside the theater,
a former
house of culture near the Proletarskaya metro station in southeastern
Moscow.
Ignatchenko identified the two women as Svetlana Kononova and
Yelena
Zinovyeva. He said a soldier was slightly wounded during the girls'
escape.
The authorities established contact with the Chechens early
Thursday
morning, and their main demand remained vague but unchanged throughout
the
day -- for federal troops to be withdrawn from Chechnya. Smaller
demands
over the release of hostages changed almost every hour.
By late Thursday night it appeared that the crisis could drag
on for
days.
"The country's leadership and the special services have
been thrust
into a situation in which any outcome would be dramatic,"
former Interior
Minister Anatoly Kulikov said on TVS television.
President Vladimir Putin, who reportedly spent the night at
the
Kremlin, made his first public comments about the crisis at 2
p.m. He
canceled a scheduled trip abroad and described the hostage-taking
as an
unprecedented act of international terrorism.
He said the safety of the hostages was of utmost importance
and
suggested that the operation might have been planned by "one
of the foreign
terrorist centers."
"The main goal of our law enforcement agencies and special
services in
planning and conducting any operations should be the release of
the hostages
with maximum care taken to ensure their safety," Putin said
during a
televised meeting with Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and police officials.
"For now, all forces must be focused on providing security
to the
adjacent territory, helping those who found themselves hostages
and
supporting their relatives," he said. "Caring for the
people is the most
important thing."
Russian television channels, some of which provided live coverage
of
the crisis throughout the day, also showed footage of Putin meeting
with top
security officials and Moslem leaders.
Foreign leaders condemned the hostage-taking and offered their
support. Putin spoke over the telephone with U.S. President George
Bush and
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the Kremlin said.
The FBI and security services of Germany, Austria, Britain,
Spain and
France were cooperating with their Russian counterparts, Interfax
reported.
Foreign security officials were expected to arrive at the site
Friday.
As the drama unfolded, curious onlookers gathered near the blocked-off
site to discuss the crisis and possible ways to release the hostages.
Armored personnel carriers and about a dozen empty buses were
parked along
nearby 1st Dubrovskaya Ulitsa.
At 1:15 p.m., State Duma Deputy Iosif Kobzon and two representatives
of the International Red Cross waving a white flag entered the
theater to
talk with the Chechens. One of the hostages said that about half
of the
attackers were women.
Five hostages were released after the negotiations. The Red
Cross
representatives led an elderly British citizen out of the building
at 1:30
p.m. Six minutes later, Kobzon emerged with the others, a woman
with a
2-year-old daughter in her arms and two 7-year-old girls.
Later in the afternoon, lawmakers Irina Khakamada and Boris
Nemtsov
joined Kobzon in a second attempt to negotiate but failed to agree
on the
release of more hostages. "Judging by the chaotic way that
they were
changing the names [of people they wanted to negotiate with] and
demands, it
seems they are acting on their own, independently," Khakamada
told reporters
as she left the theater for the Kremlin.
Mark Franchetti, the Sunday Times' Moscow correspondent and
the only
reporter allowed in the theater, said he spoke with Chechen rebel
Movsar
Barayev for about 20 minutes.
Barayev, a nephew of slain Chechen field commander Arbi Barayev,
leads
a radical Chechen group.
Khakamada said the hostage-takers turned down her appeal to
release
the children. "They said they had already released all of
the children,
while 12- and 13-year-olds were not children," she said.
Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky entered the theater for negotiations
at about 11 p.m. He emerged at 12:50 a.m.
Officials and negotiators cautiously refrained from calling
the
hostage-takers "terrorists" or "Chechens."
They referred to them instead as
"gunmen" and "these people."
In a statement read by one of the released hostages, Maria
Shkolnikova, the hostages appealed to Putin not to storm the theater
and to
comply with the Chechens' demands. Earlier in the day, relatives
of the
hostages made a similar plea on television.
Much of the drama Thursday unfolded over the air waves -- with
cellphones intermittently being used by hostages and television
and radio
stations attempting to mediate.
"Our demands are very simple -- to stop the war and withdraw
the
troops. That's all. Nothing complicated," one of the hostage-takers,
who
identified himself as Hasmamat, said on Ekho Moskvy radio at 5:20
p.m.
When asked how such a huge task could be implemented, Hasmamat
said:
"Let Putin himself think about how to withdraw the troops
that he sent
there. There is enough time to pull out the troops, or at least
half of
them."
At one point Thursday, the hostage-takers demanded that
representatives from Medecins Sans Frontieres arrive to mediate.
The
humanitarian organization's chief, Morten Rostrup, caught a flight
for
Moscow later in the day.
One demand reported several times Thursday was for a rally outside
the
theater demanding the withdrawal of the troops and Chechnya's
independence.
"The government should make a statement that it is ready
to begin
negotiations [with Chechen leaders] and at least one military
unit should be
withdrawn," hostage Anna Adrianova said on Ekho Moskvy after
consulting with
one of the hostage-takers.
Former FSB spokesman Alexander Zdanovich said that talking to
the
outside world through hostages is a hostage-taker tactic. "We
know that
there is a certain hostage mentality that forms," Zdanovich
told Interfax.
"Some of them manage to keep a cool head, while others' nerves
give out, and
that is absolutely normal."
The hostages said they had water and chocolate, but all attempts
to
deliver food inside the theater failed.
"We repeatedly offered to deliver food and water, but they
refused,
saying, 'Let the hostages suffer as we do,'" said Russian
Red Cross
spokeswoman Marina Tarasenko.
Qatar-based television station al-Jazeera aired a pre-recorded
tape of
the hostage-takers saying they were ready to die for their cause.
"I swear
by God we are more keen on dying than you are keen on living,"
a man wearing
black said on the recording, The AP reported.
"Even if we are killed, thousands of brothers and sisters
will come
after us, ready to sacrifice themselves," said a woman in
a black robe that
covered everything but her eyes.
The number of onlookers outside the theater grew in the evening.
Some
women, apparently hysterical, approached the police and offered
to replace
the hostages.
Three Chechen women came to the site in the afternoon to express
their
sympathy for the hostages. "We feel pain, shock, bitterness,
and we are
ashamed that Chechens did this," said one woman who only
gave her name as
Luiza. "We fear the consequences. Tomorrow, the police can
knock on my door.
People will consider every other Chechen a terrorist."
See also:
Act
of Terror in Moscow
Reuters.Chechen
Rebels Hold Hundreds in Theater, One Dead. October 24, 2002
The
Moscow Times. October 24, 2002. Armed Chechens Seize Moscow Theater
the original at www.themoscowtimes.com
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