Moscow Doctor: Gas Killed 116 Hostages

Moscow's chief physician said Sunday that all but one of the 117 hostages who died during an operation to free hundreds of hostages from a city theater were killed by the effects of gas used to subdue their captors.

The Interfax news agency quoted Andrei Seltsovsky as saying that one person died from bullet wounds during Saturday's assault. It was the first time that a Russian official identified the cause of death of most of the victims.

The gas left many captives unconscious, and they had to be carried from the theater suffering from symptoms of poisoning. Authorities have not said what was in the gas.

An anesthesiologist, Yevgeny Yevdokimov, said the fatal effects of the unspecified gasses were exacerbated by the weakened condition of the hostages, who had spent 58 hours in captivity under high stress and with little food or water, Interfax reported.

Nearly 650 of the released hostages still are hospitalized and more than 200 of them are in critical condition, Russian medical authorities said Sunday. They said that the death toll so far was 117.

Seltsovky told Interfax that 646 people were in the hospital, including 150 who were in intensive care wards and 45 who were in very serious condition. He said the dead included 63 men and 54 women.

Moscow hospitals on Sunday began releasing some former hostages, but most were being kept for further treatment.

Outside one of the hospitals treating survivors the wail of sirens mixed with the cries of relatives as doctors released some of the 750 who were rescued.

Anxious hostage relatives waited for word on their loved ones after a special forces raid on the theater Saturday killed most of the hostage-takers. The freed captives were taken to hospitals, most of them suffering from the effects of knockout gas that was pumped through the building before it was stormed by Russian special forces.

Some hospitals posted complete or partial lists Sunday afternoon of those being treated, but information remained fragmented. A U.S. Embassy spokesman said its workers were trying to find which hospital one of the two known American hostages was in.

Fifty of the rebels who seized the theater were killed — several with bullets to the head, apparently as they lay incapacitated from the gas. About 750 hostages were reported to have been freed in the operation.

Irina Ramtsova waited outside the black iron gates of City Clinical Hospital No. 13 with pictures of her father, Fyodor, a trumpet player at the theater seized by armed Chechen rebels Wednesday.

"We keep calling and calling and there is no information," she said.

The family last heard from him when he called on his cell phone during the 58-hour siege, and said he was seated next to one of the bombs the rebels had threatened to detonate. Official hot lines have been no help, she said.

Like Ramtsova, many were unsure where their relatives were, and came because the bulk of the survivors needing medical attention — some 320 — were at that hospital.

"They are hostages again," one of the relatives shouted to the armed guards behind the gate.

In the afternoon, a few survivors began leaving in a cold, light rain. A crowd of frantic relatives and jostling journalists were part of the chaos. Sirens blasted from passing emergency vehicles.

The scene was more tranquil at another hospital, directly across from the raided theater.

Among those let out of that clinic, Hospital No. 1 for War Veterans, was Georgy Vasilyev, the producer of "Nord-Ost," the musical that was in progress when the theater was seized.

He recalled the ordeal as a "bardak," Russian slang for complete chaos. He said he had tried to talk to the gunmen, but with little success, except for one of the female hostage-takers who gave him a prayer written in Arabic, suggesting that he read it to purify himself before death.

Russian special forces poured the knockout gas into the theater and moved in around 5:15 a.m. Saturday.

Nine hostages died because of heart problems, shock or lack of medicine, Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasilyev said on Saturday.

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Vasilyev as saying none of the victims died from gas poisoning.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry said early Sunday that a Dutch citizen, Natalja Zjirov, was among those hostages who died. No other deaths among the 71 foreigners among the hostages were known.

President Vladimir Putin, who visited some of the injured Saturday, declared Monday a national day of mourning. As the troops surrounding the theater began to withdraw, people put flowers around the site.

Besides the 50 assailants the Federal Security Service said were killed at the theater — several with bullets to the head, apparently as they lay incapacitated from the gas — officials said three other gunmen were captured, and authorities searched the city for accomplices and gunmen who may have escaped.

The chief Moscow prosecutor, Mikhail Avdyukov, said Sunday that three people have been arrested in Moscow on suspicion of helping organize and carry out the raid, the Interfax news agency reported. The prosecutor's office could not be reached by telephone for confirmation or details.

The attackers, 18 of whom were women come of whom claimed to be war widows, burst into the theater during the performance, some of them with explosives strapped to their bodies.

They mined the theater and threatened to blow it up unless Putin withdrew Russian troops from the rebellious region of Chechnya.

Russian forces pulled out of Chechnya after a devastating 1994-1996 war that left separatists in charge. In fall 1999, Putin sent troops back in after rebels based in Chechnya attacked a neighboring region and after apartment-building bombings that killed about 300 people were blamed on the militants.

In 1995 and 1996, rebels seized hundreds of hostages in two raids in southern Russia near Chechnya, and dozens of people died in both cases, many of them killed when Russian forces attacked the assailants.