President Vladimir Putin’s effort to rescue the hostages trapped in a Moscow theatre was threatening to turn from a military triumph into a political disaster last night as the authorities grudgingly admitted that up to 150 people may have been killed by Russia’s own special forces.
Clumsy use of a powerful and mysterious gas caused their deaths as well as disabling most of the 50 Chechen gunmen.
As hundreds of relatives crowded outside hospitals for a second day pleading for news on whether their loved ones were dead or alive, evening news programmes on mainly pro-Kremlin media were forced to start covering their anger and confusion.
All but two of the 117 hostages so far confirmed dead in the Moscow theatre siege died of gas poisoning, the city’s top doctor said yesterday.
Andrei Seltsovsky, chairman of Moscow’s city health committee, said only two of the 800 or so hostages had died from gunshot wounds when elite troops stormed the theatre early on Saturday.
Still in hospital were 646 of the freed hostages, of whom 150 were in intensive care and 45 were “in a grave condition”. Two women had not yet regained consciousness.
The authorities initially refused to tell doctors what the gas was, compounding the difficulties of treating patients with antidotes.
In London, where Tony Blair had been one of the first western leaders to congratulate Mr Putin on Saturday morning, the Russian ambassador, Grigory Karasin, said the authorities did not want to give away operational information helpful to potential terrorists.
Downing Street continued to back the Russian government’s handling of the theatre siege. A spokesman said yesterday: “The Russian authorities were faced with a very, very difficult situation. They had to deal with that situation. We are not going to second guess them on how they should deal with it.”
Declining to criticise the decision not to release details of the mystery gas, he added that the fact this approach denied vital information to doctors was a “genuine dilemma”.
However, the BBC reported last night that the US embassy has officially asked the Russians for more information, insisting it is crucial for the treatment of casualties.
Last night, details of the last moments of the siege were becoming clearer despite a fog of false information given initially by officials.
Giorgi Vasiliev, a senior producer at the theatre who became the main linkman between the Chechens and the authorities, gave the Guardian a very different version of events from that given by the authorities the night before.
They had said the gas was used at 5.30am on Saturday because the gunmen had started shooting hostages, leaving the authorities with no alternative but to storm the building. But Mr Vasiliev, whose account tallied with that of many witnesses, said two hostages had been shot at 3am.
It was not a cold-blooded execution in line with a strict timetable of threats but the result of a panic among the hostages which led to a young boy screaming and jumping out of his seat. In response, the gunmen opened fire but missed, hitting two people nearby. A period of stunned calm followed until 6am.
Mr Vasiliev also revealed that the elite counter-terrorist unit, known as Alfa, seized an opportunity to gas the male Chechen leaders when they were in a theatre sideroom. The Federal Security Bureau had deployed listening devices on the roof and realised the women — who had most of the explosives strapped to their bodies — could not act without orders from a male leader.
The main assault at the front came 15 minutes later. Mr Vasiliev’s account will leave Russian authorities open to charges of a cover-up. They had tried to justify their use of the gas as a measure of last resort in the face of the impending execution of hostages.
It also confirms suspicions that the women hostage-takers, as well as their leader, Arbi Barayev, were executed by the Russians while unconscious. The only resistance came from around 20 gunmen patrolling the corridors who shot at the Russian forces as they stormed the building. The Russians said three have been detained, the rest are dead.
It was too early to say how far public support for Mr Putin’s decision not to negotiate will be eroded by the authorities’ decision to use the gas and their insensitivity towards the hostages’ families after the siege.
There is little sympathy in Russia for the Chechen cause. But many Muscovites are wondering how the hostage-takers could smuggle so much weaponry into the city and then have 50 people drive up to a building in full uniform.
Some see it as further proof of a breakdown in law and order and proof that some police or army officials can be bribed into collaborating with the Chechens.
Muscovites are also wondering whether such terrorism will be repeated.
Mr Putin asked the relatives of the dead hostages for forgiveness in a TV address on Saturday, but the tenor of his statement was that no one could have expected to mount so risky a rescue without some casualties. Neither he nor the relatives can have expected they would amount to one in five of the hostages.
He declared today a national day of mourning.
Chechnya’s fugitive rebel president, Aslan Maskhadov, condemned the siege, saying he rejected “terror as a method of reaching any goals”.
A senior aide to Mr Maskhadov said the drama meant that Moscow had to choose between talking to gunmen or the man elected president of the breakaway north Caucasus republic in 1997. He warned there could be more such attacks.
Much like a Chechen Yasser Arafat, Mr Maskhadov risks losing all his remaining influence as he is increasingly ignored both by Chechen radicals and Islamists as well as Moscow, which appears set on a military solution.
Downing Street yesterday stepped back from intervening over Russian tactics in Chechnya, saying: “It is a Russian issue and we leave it to the Russians.”
Sources said the British government, unlike Moscow, was not making a direct link between Chechen rebels and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida organisation. – Guardian Unlimited