Armed Men Sieze Moscow Theater

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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This looks like trouble:

Armed Men Seize Hundreds in Moscow Theater
18 minutes ago
By Maria Golovnina

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Up to 30 armed men held hundreds of people inside a Moscow theater staging a musical late Wednesday, firing shots in the air, police and news agencies said.

A Reuters reporter close to the theater said he had heard four to five gunshots near the building.

It was not immediately clear who fired the shots or whether they came from inside the building, where some 700 people were being held.

There were no initial reports of casualties.

Interfax news agency, one of whose reporters was in the theater at the time, said the gunmen had let members of the audience make phone calls and allowed children to be released.

Muslim members of the audience attending the production of “North-East” were also allowed to leave, Interfax said. Police said they had as yet received no demands from the gunmen.

Reports say 20 to 30 gunmen had seized the theater, known as the former House of Culture in Melnikov Street in southeast Moscow. Neighboring buildings were being evacuated.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) had been informed of the incident, which happened on the eve of his official visit to Europe.

A man close to tears told a Reuters correspondent at the scene: “My friend’s wife is trapped inside. She said there are about 700 people trapped inside.”

That figure corresponded with the police estimate although the exact number remained unclear.

Police anti-terrorist teams poured into the scene and sealed off the area.

A city bus blocked off traffic while police cars closed off side streets to all traffic except ambulances.

Around 50 police were on the scene, some marshaling a large crowd that gathered behind the police cordon.

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Being reported that the gunman are lying mines in the building

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MOSCOW (AP) -- Armed men who claimed to be Chechens seized a crowded Moscow theater Wednesday and took the audience captive, the Federal Security Service said. Gunshots rang out during the rare hostage-taking in the Russian capital, and police and security forces went on high alert.

A woman who made her way out of the theater said in an interview on Russia's NTV television that men wearing camouflage went on stage, fired in the air and said: "Don't you understand what's going on? We are Chechens. We are not hiding it."

ITAR-Tass reported the men were laying mines inside the theater. The report was based on a spectator who called the police emergency number, but it could not be verified.

TV6 television news quoted theater-goers as saying the attackers said they had mines on their bodies and would blow themselves up if Russian security forces tried to storm the building.

In an interview with The Echo of Moscow radio station, a boy who was freed said the men were from the Caucasus region, spoke in one of the languages of southern Russia and demanded an end to Russia's war against Chechnya. The boy did not give his name.

Over the past decade Chechens or their sympathizers have been involved in a number of hostage-taking situations in southern Russian provinces, especially in Dagestan.

Russian forces left Chechnya in 1996 after a disastrous two-year war but returned in 1999 after rebels raided a neighboring region and Russian authorities blamed rebels for a series of apartment bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people.

Russia media reported about 700 people were inside the theater. The report could not be immediately confirmed. An Associated Press reporter saw two ambulances, but it was unclear what connection they had with events in the theater.

The theater, a former Soviet-era House of Culture that belonged to a ball-bearing plant, was staging a performance of the musical "Nord-Ost," one of Moscow's most popular productions.

The Interfax news agency said one of its reporters was inside the theater at the time of the raid. She told Interfax by telephone that the armed men fired into the air and would not let the audience leave.

Interfax said its reporter believed there were about 20 men in the group, and quoted unidentified law enforcement sources as saying the same. Interfax said some children had been allowed to leave the theater as well as Muslims. The reports could not be verified.

Police units and an Alpha special forces unit went to the scene and sealed off the area in the freezing, wet weather. The Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet KGB, and the Interior Ministry put plan "Thunderstorm" into effect, which required all officers to report to their units.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was immediately told of the hostage taking, Interfax reported. Mosow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov went to the theater.

Located in southeastern Moscow in a working class neighborhood, the musical is based on Veniamin Kaverin's novel "Two Captains." The romantic novel recounts the story of two students and their different destinies during the Soviet times. The theater's producer, Alexander Tsekalo, said on Russian television that the theater could hold 1,163 people.

According to the theater's Web site, more than 350,000 people have seen the production since it opened.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by underthedome: *
"Don't you understand what's going on? We are Chechens. We are not hiding it."

[/QUOTE]

sounds fishy...why would they say that???someone is tryin to frame em i think.

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To early to tell hskhan....

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by hskhan: *

sounds fishy...why would they say that???someone is tryin to frame em i think.
[/QUOTE]

why would they? why would they not actually? they ahve a statement to make and their political agenda to publicize..what good would it do to them if they say 'we are pizza delivery guys"

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sigh

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I heard its armed men and women that took hostages....hmmm....and heard that they realeased some children and some women and some muslims.

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Any latest development?

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MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) – Two large explosions have been heard outside the Moscow theatre where Chechen militants are holding about 700 people hostage.

The blasts came on Thursday evening, hours after the body of a 20-year-old woman was removed from the theatre.

A Russian medical services spokesman said the woman had been shot in the chest, and it appeared she had been killed when the audience was taken hostage on Wednesday evening.

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Animals

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The lack of coverage of this event is odd.

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the "sniper-caught" story is tops for the day, hopefully we'll hear more about this as time moves on.

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Al Jazeera released a video from chechens....

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I've just read up about the events, I have a brief knowledge of Checnya's past struggles against Russain barbarism, cant blame them for this last ditch effort to get there freedom.

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"probably a set-up"

"cant blame them"

That's classic, first you deny they could be involved, then you show approval for their violent actions against innocents.

Disgraceful.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by mo_best: *
I've just read up about the events, I have a brief knowledge of Checnya's past struggles against Russain barbarism, cant blame them for this last ditch effort to get there freedom.
[/QUOTE]

Taking innocents hostage, killing at least one of them and shooting at two 18 year old females when they were escaping and you say you can't blame them for this last ditch terror effort??

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Anyone wants to hazard a guess which foreign terrorist centers is Putin referring to?

http://www.nandotimes.com/world/story/589278p-4591471c.html

Meeting with security officials Thursday, Putin said “freeing the hostages with the maximum assurance of their safety,” was the main goal. He said the raid was planned “in one of the foreign terrorist centers” but did not name it.

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American Bashers: Notice how the American Media (the nando time AP story in the post above) “sanitized” the story by taking the word infidel out.

Americans: if the difference is true then the media is not giving us accurate information and starting to play PC games with this very important issue. Hopefully, a complaint or an inquiry to the news agencies is in order.

http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/today/main/top10.htm
Hostage-taker threatens to ‘kill infidels’

MOSCOW (AFP)ûA woman clad in an Islamic chador vowed Thursday to “kill hundreds of infidels” in footage aired by Qatar’s Al-Jazeera satellite TV which said she was one of the Chechen rebels in Moscow’s hostage crisis.
An employee at Al-Jazeera told AFP the satellite television channel had received the tape on Tuesday, the day before the rebels took hundreds of theater-goers hostage in Moscow.
“We have chosen to die in Moscow and we will kill hundreds of infidels,” said the woman covered in black from head to toe, flanked by several other women.
“We have chosen to struggle to regain freedom for the Chechen people … and it doesn’t matter to us where we die,” she said.
“Even if we are killed, thousands of our brothers and sisters will be ready to sacrifice themselves for God and for the liberation of their homeland,” said the unnamed woman.
“The Russian occupiers have spilled our children’s blood on our land. We have waited too long for a just solution, but (the international community) is apathetic and does not care for innocent people.
“Chechen patriots are exterminated and labeled ‘terrorists’ and ‘criminals’ whereas it is the Russians who are the real terrorists,” she said.
A black-clad man shown on Al-Jazeera and also presented as one of the rebels said he and his colleagues had “come to the Russian capital to either obtain an end to the war or die as martyrs.
“Our demands boil down to an end to the war and the withdrawal of Russian forces” from Chechnya, he said.
“We are carrying out this operation on orders from the military commander of the Chechen republic,” he said, adding: “We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for God and for the independence of Chechnya.”
A staff member in Al-Jazeera’s newsroom told AFP the video aired by the TV “contained two messages and was recorded before the hostages were taken in Moscow” late Wednesday.
“The video was delivered to our Moscow office by an unknown individual on Tuesday and we decided to air it today,” he said, requesting anonymity.
“We have aired all the video and we have no other tapes at the moment” related to the hostage crisis, he added.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chaltahai: *
Animals
[/QUOTE]

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