Julie Stahl, CNSNews.com
Friday, Oct. 25, 2002

An estimated 40 to 50 heavily armed militants stormed into the theater, packed for a sold-out performance of the Russian hit musical "Nord-ost" (North-East) on Wednesday evening.

They threatened to blow up the building with hundreds of people inside if the Russian army did not withdraw from Chechnya within a week.

Chechnya, which is mainly Muslim, declared its independence from Russia in 1991 and has fought two wars with Russia since then, including the current three-year-old struggle. Chechnya wants to form an independent Islamic republic.

The Qatari-based satellite television station al-Jazeera broadcast footage from inside the theater. Terrorists inside said they were ready to die for their god, and for the independence of Chechnya, according to a radio report.

Russian television showed pictures of the covered body of a woman hostage as it was removed from the theater Thursday. According to Inter-Tass News Agency, the woman was a hostage who was killed during the first hours of the takeover.

British, German, American, Canadian, Australian and Dutch citizens are believed to be among the hostages. They were to have been released earlier, but that deal did not materialize.

An estimated 150 people have either escaped from the building or been released since last night, including five people Thursday, one of whom was said to be a British national.

According to reports from hostages inside the building, who were initially allowed to use their cellular telephones, the terrorists were wired with explosives and bombs had been placed under some theater seats as well as in the corridors.

Field commander Movsar Barayev, a nephew of the late Chechen warlord's Arbi Barayev, is said to be leading the attack.

"Nobody will get out of here alive, and they will die along with us if any attempt is made to storm the building," Barayev was quoted as saying by the Chechen Web site Kavkaz-Centre.

He said that fighters, which included women, were "suicide attackers" who had come to Moscow "not to survive, but to die." One Chechen source was quoted as saying that all the "martyrs" were mined.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has had to postpone trips to Germany and Portugal and canceled his participation at the Asia-Pacific summit in Mexico, where he was to have met with President Bush.

Planned in 'Foreign Terrorist Centers'

In his first televised statement since the crisis began, Putin charged that the attack had been planned in "foreign terrorist centers." He laid the blame on "the same criminals who have been terrorizing Chechnya for the last few years."

Israel, fighting its own war against terror, offered its support to Russia.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke with the Russian Ambassador Gennady Terasov after the crisis began and expressed his solidarity with the Russian government.

Sharon told Terasov that Israel "supports the war on terror" and offered to give any assistance that Russia requested.

Dr. Stefani Hoffman, director of the Mayrock Center for Russian, Eurasian and East European Research at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that assistance was likely to be in intelligence rather than operative.

"There is a feeling that the two countries are opposing the same kind of Islamic terrorism," Hoffman said in a telephone interview. "This will strengthen those ties."

Hoffman also said that there has been talk about links between Chechen rebels and the al-Qaeda terror network.

"There has been talk in the past about a connection with al-Qaeda," Hoffman said. There have also been dead soldiers found with passports from other Muslim countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, she added.

A man accused of helping to carry out the Sept. 11 terror attack told a German court this week, that Mohammed Atta, believed to have been the leader of the hijackers, had wanted to fight in Chechnya, the BBC said on its Web site.

Chechen rebels have a history of hostage-taking in spectacular events. In 1995, more than 100 people were killed when they seized a hospital in the Russian town of Budennovsk.

In 1996, Chechen militants took more than 2000 people hostage in the town of Kizlyar in Dagestan and in 2001 hijacked a plane en route to Turkey, forcing it to land in Saudi Arabia.

According to Hoffman, the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. hurt the cause of the Chechans as the U.S. was then more inclined to back Russia's war on terror for two reasons: U.S. need for Russian support in fighting the Afghanistan Taliban, and Chechen links to al-Qaeda.

Oddly enough, one country that has stayed out of the Russian-Chechen conflict is the Islamic nation of Iran, Hoffman said.

"It's part of [Iran's] pragmatic approach to the world," she said. "It has certain interests [among which] are buying arms [from Russia] and supplying [Iran] with a nuclear reactor. Iran is also the enemy of the Taliban."

Copyright CNSNews.com

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

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Editor's note:
Revealed: The Terrorists Living Among Us