Negotiations with theatre gunman begin again
Negotiations between Russian officials and Chechen gunman in a Moscow theatre were launched again today after four mediators waving a white flag entered the building to seek an end to the desperate standoff.
Hostage Maria Shkolnikova said by mobile phone that the gunmen wanted to speak to the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders and that they said foreigners could be released after the talks.
"People are close to a nervous breakdown," she said, adding that the hostages had only been fed some water and chocolate.
Interfax said the top Red Cross official in Moscow, Michel Minning, had arrived at the scene. He was among the negotiators in the 1997 hostage crisis at the Japanese Embassy in Lima, Peru.
At least 40 Chechens, reportedly including several female fighters, stormed in during last night’s musical.
They fired in the air, strapped explosives to their bodies and demanded the Russia army begin pulling out of Chechnya.
A pro-rebel website said the Russians had seven days to begin withdrawing troops from Chechnya or the theatre and the hostages would be blown up.
A Russian official said the hostage takers had automatic weapons, grenades, belts of explosives, mines and petrol cans.
The dramatic events occurring less than three miles from the Kremlin were a bitter blow for President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly said Moscow has the situation in Chechnya under control.
He scrapped a trip to Germany and then Portugal today.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said: ‘‘It is a tragic situation that shows us once again the kind of world we are living in.’’ Powell said he hoped it would be resolved peacefully.
The Interfax news agency, quoting released hostages, said there were pools of blood in the hall of the theatre but no casualties. Other hostages said the attackers had beaten up some of the captives.
A Chechen rebel website said the group was led by Movsar Barayev, the nephew of warlord Arbi Barayev, who reportedly died last year.
The website said some of the women hostage takers were the widows of Chechen rebels killed fighting the Russians.
On the website, the hostage takers called themselves ‘‘smertniki,’’ a word that in Russian refers to fighters who die for a cause.
Russian troops do not plan to storm the building unless the hostage takers start killing the hostages, said Gennady Gudkov, deputy chairman of the parliamentary Security Committee. But he said ‘‘it could be days’’ before the situation is resolved.
Vladimir Lukin, former Russian ambassador to Washington and a leading liberal, said the hostage taking showed the effectiveness of Russian law enforcement agencies was ‘‘zero’’.
Chechens or their supporters have staged a number of bold, often bloody hostage-taking situations in southern Russian provinces, especially Dagestan.
Russian forces left Chechnya in 1996 after a disastrous two-year war but returned in 1999 after rebels raided a neighbouring region and Moscow blamed rebels for a series of apartment bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people.
The theatre, a former Soviet-era House of Culture, was staging the musical Nord-Ost, one of the city’s most popular productions.
Putin said the overriding goal of police and troops in the Moscow hostage crisis is to make sure that none of the hundreds of hostages are harmed.
Putin said the hostage-takers ‘‘have spread death and destruction in Chechnya and elsewhere and now want to spread it further.’’
Putin later cancelled his trip to the Apec summit in Mexico next week, the Kremlin said.
