Woman killed in Moscow theatre siege

Chechen separatist guerillas killed one woman as they seized a Russian theatre and threatened to shoot or blow up 700 hostages yesterday unless Russia pulled its troops out of their homeland.

Two other women trapped in the theatre in south-east Moscow managed to escape but one was wounded by her Chechen captors as she fled, news agencies said, quoting officials.

Police said around 40 rebels, including masked women with explosives strapped to them, had shot a woman who tried to escape as they burst into the theatre late on Wednesday.

The rebels, who called themselves a suicide squad, made threats on a Chechen website and through hostages to blow up the theatre or begin killing captives unless their demands were met.

The radio station Ekho Moskvy quoted child heart specialist Maria Shkolnikova as telling it from inside the building: "They are saying 'You have been sitting here for 10 hours and your government has done nothing to secure your release.'

"The main thing is that troops must be pulled out or they will start shooting people."

Arab satellite television station, al-Jazeera, showed tapes of Chechen rebels yesterday saying they were ready to die for the independence of their homeland and to take the lives of "infidel" hostages seized in a Moscow theatre.

The television showed a tape of what it said was one of the women rebels saying:

"It makes no difference to us where we die and we chose to die here in Moscow and we will take with us the souls of the infidels." She was one of five veiled women shown standing in front of a banner with "God is great" written on it in Arabic.

Her comments were translated into Arabic. Jazeera also showed in a separate tape what it said was one of the male rebels.

"Each of us is ready to sacrifice for God and the independence of Chechnya. We seek death more than you seek life," he said.

Shkolnikova told Reuters, also by mobile phone, that the rebels had planted explosives all around the theatre hall, in passageways, on seats and even attached to hostages themselves.

FSB security service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko told reporters conditions inside the theatre were worsening.

"The situation is very tense. There are diabetics in there. Their condition is beginning to play up. There are people with heart problems."

He told NTV television the woman who died was killed on Wednesday as she tried to escape.

FSB officials said 75 foreigners were among those held. President Vladimir Putin, who rose to power on pledges three years ago to clamp down on the decade-old rebellion on Russia's southern fringe and boost public security, said the main task was to secure the hostages' safe release.

He said information from the rebels' representatives confirmed that "the terrorist act was planned abroad".

The Chechen news website www.kavkaz.org reported what it said was a statement by the attackers' commander, Movsar Barayev. "There's more than a thousand people here. No one will get out of here alive and they'll die with us if there's any attempt to storm the building," the website quoted him saying.

He called on Putin to stop the war and pull his troops out of Chechnya if he wanted to save the hostages' lives.

The rebels freed around 150 hostages on Wednesday, including up to 20 children and some Muslims, and a few more yesterday, among them three children and a Briton in his 50s or 60s.

But Iosif Kobzon, a member of parliament and entertainer who was taking part in negotiations, told Interfax news agency: "When I asked them to free others, they said they had already let the three smallest ones go and would release no one else."

Another negotiator, liberal deputy Irina Khakamada, outlined the rebels's demands to a Putin aide after meeting the guerillas, but no details were so far made public.

Putin, facing his sternest test since becoming president, has taken a tough stand on the conflict in Chechnya, where the Kremlin has twice launched military pushes to crush separatists.

One Russian official said the guerillas described themselves as a suicide death squad, or "smertniki". Police said there were up to 700 people still in the theatre, a modern building about four kilometres southeast of the Kremlin.

Austrian ambassador Franz Cede said the Western captives included Australians, Austrians, Britons, Germans and Americans.

US President George W. Bush called Putin to offer support at "a time of solidarity between the United States and Russia," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

Britain said it was sending a team of counter-terrorist experts to help secure the safe release of the hostages.

Western accusations of human rights abuses against civilians in devastated Chechnya have died down since Putin threw Moscow's backing behind the US-led global war on terrorism following last year's September 11 attacks in the United States.

It was unclear what foreign groups Putin might be accusing. Russia has drawn attention to Arab fighters in Chechnya and accuses the rebels of links to radical Islamist groups like the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda, whom Washington blames for the September 11 attacks. But privately, Western diplomats play down any Chechen involvement by al Qaeda.

Hostage Tatyana Solnyshkina, speaking by mobile telephone, addressed security forces live on NTV television:

"There are a lot of explosives. Don't open fire on them. I am very scared, I ask you please do not start attacking."

An armoured personnel carrier was parked in a lane near the theatre, along with six trucks full of Interior Ministry troops, all in helmets and armed. Some wore masks.

But Gennady Gutkov, a member of parliament's security committee, said: "The building will not be stormed at the initiative of the Russian side if the terrorists do not undertake actions to kill large numbers of hostages."

Crowds of relatives waited outside the theatre for news. "It's a nightmare," said Yekaterina Ostankhova, a woman in her 70s whose 19-year-old grandson, a theatre decorator, was inside. "What's next? This is the capital of all places. I've come here and I've heard nothing. I'm just standing here.

"I would be willing to go inside, even if they kill me." Russia has fought on and off since 1994 to quell the revolt in Chechnya, which costs lives daily among troops and civilians.

Putin's decision as a politically inexperienced prime minister in October 1999 to order troops back into Chechnya helped to catapult him into the Kremlin. His firm handling and public fighting talk made him Russia's most trusted politician.

He cancelled a trip to Portugal via Berlin due to begin yesterday and pulled out of an Asia-Pacific summit in Mexico that was likely to take in talks with Bush on Iraq and North Korea.

The hostage-taking is the most audacious Chechen attack since the first Chechen war of 1994 to 1996.