October 25, 2002	Friday	Sha’aban 18,1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

MOSCOW, Oct 24: Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed on Thursday not to give in to Chechens holding more than 700 hostages at gunpoint in a Moscow theatre and ordered his forces to secure their release.

The Chechen separatists, who call themselves “smertniki” or death squads, shot dead a woman hostage as she attempted to flee at the start of their assault, Russian security officials said.

Earlier in the day the hostage takers released some 150 people, including children and foreigners.

In a humiliating blow to Putin’s hardline policy on the Chechen conflict, up to 50 heavily-armed rebels, including women, burst into the theatre on Wednesday during a performance of a hit musical and took the entire audience and cast hostage.

Explosives strapped to their bodies, they have threatened to shoot the hostages, among them children, and blow up the theatre unless their demands for a Russian pullout from Chechnya are met in seven days.

But Putin, who swiftly cancelled a planned trip to Mexico for an Asia-Pacific summit, took a hardline stand, vowing he would not give in to the demands of the guerillas, fighting for independence for the mountainous Muslim Caucasus territory.

“We will not give in to provocations,” Putin said, following a meeting with Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

“The most important thing is to guarantee the safety of areas near the theatre, to help the hostages and to assist their relatives,” Putin added, with a clear implication that Russian forces were contemplating an armed operation to free the hostages.

He also linked the hostage-taking to the Oct 12 bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali which killed 190 people, saying it had been organized by “the same people”.

The dead woman’s body was brought out of the building on a stretcher, images broadcast on Russian television showed. The rebel website kavkaz.org said earlier that a woman was shot on Wednesday as she tried to enter the building because the guerillas had taken her for a security agent.

Two young Russian women managed to escape on Thursday evening, an FSB security official said.

The two 18-year-olds climbed out of a window and one of them suffered light wounds after the hostage-takers threw grenades at them, said FSB spokesman Sergei Ignachenko.

On Thursday two explosions were heard near the building.

Up to 45 children aged between 12 and 16 are among the hostages, a senior Russian education official said.

FSB security forces and army special units were on high alert, and a tank took up position within 400 metres from the theatre in the morning.

An Alpha anti-terrorist security force was also in position while heavily armed troops and police, including snipers, surrounded the building, as hundreds of relatives and friends held an anxious vigil outside.

WORLD REACTION: World leaders rallied to Putin’s side, condemning what they called a terrorist act, but also calling for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

US President George Bush, who had been due to meet Putin in Mexico, phoned the Russian leader to voice his support and offer any help.

The UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the hostage seizure and demanded the abductees’ immediate and unconditional release.

In footage aired by Qatar’s Al-Jazeera satellite TV, a woman who said she was one of the Chechen rebels in Moscow’s hostage crisis vowed to “kill hundreds of infidels”.

“We have chosen to die in Moscow and we will kill hundreds of infidels,” said the woman.

On the rebels’ website they said that if the Russians did not end the war in Chechnya within a week, the theatre “will be blown up with all hostages”.

One of the captives said the rebels had threatened “to shoot 10 people every hour if their demands are not met”.

The hostages urged Putin in a television appeal to meet the guerillas’ demands.

“We are asking you to make a reasonable decision and end the war in Chechnya. Enough with wars, we want peace. Please find a peaceful solution or blood will be spilled,” hostage Maria Shkolnikova said, reading from a statement.

Shkolnikova, like the other hostages, was allowed to communicate by mobile phone.

The Austrian and German ambassadors and several other foreign diplomats visited the scene, with 75 non-Russians among the hostages, according to the FSB.

These include four Americans, seven Germans, two Dutch, two Australians, 23 Ukrainians, three Turks, five Azeris, three Latvians, a Canadian, three Britons, two Swiss, one Bulgarian, three Georgians, an Armenian and a Moldovan, said an FSB spokesman.

The crisis has raised fears of a repetition of a botched hostage release operation at Budyennovsk, in southern Russia, in June 1995 when Chechens took several hundred people hostage in a hospital and more than 100 civilians died after Russian troops stormed the building.

After releasing several hostages on Wednesday night, mostly women and children, the hostage-takers set five others free — a British national in his 50s, a Russian woman and three children — shortly after midday.

Thirty-seven hostages have been freed in total, the FSB said.

Two international Red Cross legates were allowed into the theatre to bring medical supplies and take out one ill hostage, as well as two children and a woman, International Red Cross Committee spokeswoman Annick Bouvier said.

The kavkaz.org website said the raid was led by Movsar Barayev, the nephew of Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev, who was killed last year.

Russian forces have been battling since Oct 1999 to restore Moscow’s control over Chechnya. More than 4,500 Russian soldiers have died and between 10,000 and 20,000 civilians have been reported killed.

Following a ceasefire in the first Chechen war in 1994-1996, Chechnya had remained officially within the Russian Federation but enjoyed de facto independence.

The earlier conflict left some 80,000 people dead.—AFP