MOSCOW, Oct 29: Russia stepped up its war on Chechen guerillas on Tuesday after President Vladimir Putin ordered the military to draw up new anti-terror plans in the wake of last week’s hostage drama in Moscow.
Police arrested dozens of people suspected of involvement in the three-day stand-off which left 117 hostages and 50 Chechen militants dead, almost all of them gassed by Russian forces in a controversial army assault.
Officials said that 41 of the Chechen hostage-takers had been shot dead during the rescue operation. Many of them were unconscious at the time from the effects of the gas, according to members of the special forces who led the assault.
Moscow prosecutor Mikhail Avdyukov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency that four hostages also died of gunshot wounds when Russian special forces stormed a Moscow theatre to rescue 800 people seized by Chechen guerrillas.
A fifth woman was shot dead in the confusion at the start of the siege last Wednesday as she attempted to enter the building, Avdyukov said.
The Chechens had threatened to blow up the theatre and kill all the hostages if Russia did not end its war against their breakaway Chechen republic.
Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said several dozen people believed to have participated in the theatre siege had been arrested.
A Chechen lawmaker complained on Tuesday that Chechens in the Russian capital were being harassed, searched and taken in for photos and fingerprinting.
Putin vowed on Monday that Russia would take bold action against “terrorists wherever they may be,” but the crisis has renewed international pressure on Moscow to seek a political solution in Chechnya.
Moscow says Chechens have links to international terrorism, including Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, and likened its handling of the hostage stand-off to the US campaign since Sept 11.
Russia has ruled out all talks with Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, who said on Monday that more attacks like the Moscow hostage taking were inevitable unless Putin sought a peace settlement.
He firmly denied any involvement in the audacious attack on the Russian capital, however.
“You will never be able to crush the Chechen people and bring it to its knees. There is one reasonable, correct step — to sit down at the negotiating table,” Maskhadov told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location in Chechnya.
The remarks came as a world congress of Chechens was being held in Denmark, which infuriated Moscow so soon after the hostage crisis. European nations have stepped up the pressure on Putin to stop waging its deadly military campaign in Chechnya.
“We know they don’t have a military solution. Therefore they have to have some kind of political solution,” EU foreign policy representative Javier Solana said on Monday.
