Moscow Theater Standoff Ends

A hostage crisis in Moscow that began Wednesday night is finally over.

Russian special forces stormed the theater where Chechen rebels were holding hundreds of hostages, and officials said they were in control of the building. About 20 bodies were seen being removed from the theater and the lead hostage-taker was reportedly killed.

Movsar Barayev a young warlord who inherited a gang of rebels from his uncle, the infamous Arbi Barayev had led the group of as many as 50 heavily armed men and women into the theater Wednesday evening. Kudryavtsev said he was killed in the rescue raid.

The hostages were being let out of the building, said Pavel Kudryavtsev, an official at the command center handling the crisis. Buses were also seen heading to the theater.

The bodies were brought out shortly after an AP photographer saw about a hundred Russian special forces troops and firefighters entered the building. Wounded hostages were seen being removed from the Moscow theater where hundreds are being held, Russian news agencies reported.

The Interfax news agency also said several people, apparently hostage-takers, were being brought out from the building with their hands bound.

Before the rapid succesion of events, journalists had been moved by authorities further away from the theater where the standoff was entering its third day.

The hostage-takers had threatened to begin killing their captives by sunrise Saturday if demands for Russia's withdrawal from Chechnya aren't met.

Earlier, a mediator had said that unless Russian President Putin promised an end to the war in Chechnya, the Muslim gunmen would start executing their hundreds of hostages, one by one.

Several adult hostages had been released prior to the seige, apparently for medical care.

But visions of a deal to free scores of foreigners among the captives, including three Americans, vanished in a Moscow mist of dashed hopes and dire new threats, reports CBS News Correspondent Richard Roth.

Inside the theater, the rebels' leader, Movsar Barayev, - had told Russian TV he has just one goal - an independent Chechnya. He called his group, armed with guns and some strapped with explosives, the death squad of Islam.

Russian President Putin today offered what he called "any kind of contacts" to resolve the crisis, but he didn't offer compromise.

The government's only public offer is a pledge: if the hostages are freed, says an official, "the terrorists" won't be killed.

Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, said the approximately 50 rebels' lives would be guaranteed if they freed all hostages - including 30 children and 75 foreigners.

In Baghdad, President Saddam Hussein had urged the rebels to free their hostages, saying the standoff will anger the Russian people when the real enemies of Islam are Americans and Israel.

"The tyrant of the age, namely Zionism and America, and not Russia, or China or India are our enemies," Saddam said in a statement read by an announcer over Iraqi state television.

If the siege ends in more bloodshed, he said the Chechens "will lose the sympathy of Russia and the Russian people" and give the Americans and Israelis the opportunity "to stab Islam and the Muslims."

The Iraqi leader issued the appeal as Russia, along with France, was seeking to block a tough, U.S.-sponsored resolution in the U.N. Security Council threatening Baghdad with war if it does not open its doors to U.N. weapons inspectors and give up weapons of mass destruction.

Daria Morgunova, a spokeswoman for the theater where the hostages were seized Wednesday night as they watched a popular musical, said the dawn (midnight EDT) deadline was relayed to her in a cell phone call from an actor being held hostage.

Patrushev made the Russian offer after a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, who was later quoted as saying the Kremlin was "open for any contacts."

"We are conducting talks and will conduct talks, hoping that they will bring positive results in freeing the hostages," Patrushev said.

Later Friday, Aslambek Aslakhanov, a lawmaker from Chechnya in the federal parliament, journalist Anna Politkovskaya and two Red Cross representatives entered the building for a new round of negotiations with the rebels, according to Alexander Machevsky, a Kremlin official.

"I was stunned to see the hostages' mood. They were preparing to die," Politkovskaya told reporters when she emerged from the theater after a first visit earlier Friday during which she convinced the rebels to accept a delivery of water for the hostages.

Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasiliyev charged that Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov was behind the attack, and Russian networks broadcast a videotape of Maskhadov, apparently made sometime since June, in an effort to prove the link.

The tape shows Maskhadov saying rebels have shifted from guerrilla warfare to an "offensive" strategy and adding, "I am certain that in the final stage there will be a still more unique action, similar to the jihad, that will liberate our land from the Russian aggressors."

The hostages had included Americans, Britons, Dutch, Australians, Austrians and Germans, and embassies were requested to send representatives to the scene to meet their freed citizens, Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko said.

An Oklahoma City woman, Jean Booker, said the State Department reported her son, Sandy Alan Booker, 49, who was vacationing in Russia, was among the captives. He lives in the Oklahoma capital as well.

"We're very concerned that no other hostages have been freed and that the terrorists are not prepared to discuss the release of other hostages," U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said minutes after the children were freed.

The rebels, including women who claim to be widows of ethnic insurgents, have demanded that Russia withdraw its troops from the Caucasus province of Chechnya. Earlier, a Web site linked to the rebels said they would blow up the theater if the Russians did not withdraw in seven days.

Russian NTV crews were allowed inside with a doctor Friday and videotape was broadcast showing three male captors - in camouflage and carrying Kalashnikov-style rifles - sitting in what appeared to be a kitchen.

Two wore black masks. The television identified a third man, who wore no mask, as group leader Movsar Barayev, a nephew of rebel warlord Arbi Barayev, who reportedly died last year.

Two women in the group of rebels wore robes with Arabic script on the head coverings. Only their eyes were exposed, and they cradled pistols against their chests.

The women had what looked to be explosives wrapped in tape around their waists. The packages were wired to a small button the women carried in their hands.

Yelena Malyonkina, also a spokeswoman for the "Nord-Ost" musical being staged in the theater, said captive production official Anatoly Glazychev told her a bomb was placed in the center of the theater and the stage and aisles were mined.

"Both the terrorists and hostages are nervous," Malyonkina said.

Ignatchenko said some hostages were sympathizing with their captors' and calling relatives by cell phones to ask them to stage anti-war demonstrations in Moscow.

"I swear by God we are more keen on dying than you are keen on living," a black-clad male said in remarks believed to have been recorded Wednesday. "Each one of us is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of God and the independence of Chechnya."

The hostage-taking occurred less than three miles from the Kremlin and further undermined claims by Putin and other Russian officials that the situation is under control in Chechnya, where Russian soldiers suffer casualties daily in skirmishes or mine explosions.

Over the past decade, Chechens or their sympathizers have been involved in a number of bold, often bloody hostage-taking situations in southern Russian provinces, especially in Dagestan. Nearly 200 hundred hostages and rescuers died in two of operations.