Over 100 dead as Moscow siege ends in gunfire and gas; Forces act

A pre-dawn assault by special forces soldiers and a bloody gun battle inside the Moscow theatre held by Chechen rebels yesterday ended the three-day siege in the city, leaving 90 hostages dead and unresolved questions over how President Putin deals with his personal "war against terrorism" in Russia's backyard.

The assault by Russian special forces, triggered when the hostage- takers killed two of their captives, ended with 90 civilians and all but three of the 50 or so Chechen fighters dead. The Russian security forces and President Vladimir Putin insisted that the rescue of 750 others had prevented even greater carnage.

Nearly all the hostage-takers, including their leader Movsar Barayev, who stormed the theatre on Wednesday evening, were killed when special forces launched a 6am assault after first pumping a potent sleeping gas into the building.

The dramatic end to the siege, carried live on worldwide television, ended the ordeal for the hundreds of hostages, many of whom were seen stumbling from the building as the sound of gunfire and explosions rang out around them.

The Chechen rebels, who demanded a withdrawal of Russian troops from their homeland, had threatened to start shooting their captives yesterday morning and warned that they had rigged the theatre with explosives to prevent a sudden assault.

In the event, the theatre was not blown up as Chechens and Russian soldiers fought a furious gun battle inside the auditorium. Observers said the strike force had acted "in an extremely professional way" although the high number of casualties and pictures from inside the building afterwards indicated that bloody carnage had taken place during the battle.

The death toll from the storming of the theatre rose from 30 hostages in the early hours to 90 by mid-afternoon. More than 349 of the hostages had been hospitalised, many of them suffering the effects of the gas pumped into the building before the assault. All 70 foreign nationals, including two British captives, survived the siege.

According to medics on the scene, some hostages died of suffocation as they choked on vomit caused by the incapacitating gas which Russian security services said complied with the Chemical Weapons Convention.

President Putin, for whom the raid was a huge political gamble, last night told the nation: "We could not save everyone - forgive us."

With the full repercussions of the three-day siege still to sink in, Putin made a prompt appearance at the hospitals where hostages were recovering. Attempting to look compassionate, he also capitalised on his hard-man image of resolutely refusing to cede to any demands that he end Russia's three-year war in the breakaway southern republic. "We proved that Russia cannot be forced to its knees," said Putin.

The Russian president immediately won praise from abroad for his handling of the biggest crisis since the sinking of the Kursk. Tony Blair telephoned Putin to congratulate him on the "impressive achievement" of rescuing most of the hostages, according to the Kremlin.

The US President George W Bush condemned the heavily armed men and women who carried out the attack, which White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said was "a reminder of the risk to the free world that terrorists present".

In Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon congratulated Russia on an example to all nations of not compromising on terror. French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin lamented the "very heavy" human toll and separately the French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin called for a peaceful resolution in Chechnya, where Russian forces have been fighting a protracted and dirty war against rebels in the second war in the mostly Muslim region in less than a decade.

Having left the decision to his commander on the ground, Putin was informed of the assault at around 5.15am local time, just after 1am in the UK, when the rebels executed two hostages and opened fire on others who managed to flee.

After pumping gas into the building's ventilation system, the Russian forces blasted their way in through the theatre wall and picked off several Chechen fighters before they could set off any bombs or explosives. The intense gunfight left 50 hostage-takers dead, said Russian officials, while their own troops suffered no losses. Television pictures showed the blood-stained bodies of Chechen fighters and black-robed women with explosives strapped to their torsos lying dead or slumped in chairs. A few of the Chechens were seen being led away alive.

The Russian authorities hailed the assault as a brilliant success which had avoided mass deaths. A survivor of the siege, Interfax news agency correspondent Olga Chernyak, said that they would all have died had the theatre not been stormed. "We were expecting to die, we knew that they would not let us go free," she said.

In the aftermath of the raid Russian interior minister Boris Gryzlov said that a high level security would be maintained around Moscow and that a wide-ranging operation was under way to uncover a Chechen "terrorist network" believed to exist in the city. Police later said that 30 people had been arrested in connection with the hostage-taking.

Chechen analysts warned that the incident was not the end of terrorism in Russia. "There will be more blood on both sides," said Pavel Felenhaur, an expert on Chechnya.

Last night, as the carnage was being cleared up, there were two questions being asked on the streets of Moscow: how could this have been allowed to happen and what will happen next?

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