Mounting Anger Over Unknown Gas
As Russian families began to bury their loved ones there is mounting anger over the government's refusal to identify the gas that killed so many people, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.
The U.S. ambassador to Moscow accused the Russians of reverting to Soviet-style secrecy and said more information might have saved lives.
"The secrecy is especially unnecessary as the U.S. now believes the gas - fentanyl - is a legal anesthetic," said U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow
Moscow health officials repeated Tuesday that two victims of last week's hostage crisis died of gunshot wounds, saying a report quoting the chief Moscow prosecutor as claiming 45 were killed by gunfire was inaccurate.
More than 40 of the rebels were killed by gunfire, both prosecutors and health officials agree.
At the same time, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Gasperini, there are also calls for an investigation into why doctors weren't told about the knockout gas used when troops re-took the theater on Saturday. The gas immobilized the hostage-takers, but it also killed more than 100 hostages. There were no first aid facilities on the scene and no antidote was given to doctors to counter effects of the deadly gas.
Russia's interior ministry says dozens of people have been arrested on suspicion they helped Chechen rebels mount their daring raid in Moscow. They say the Chechens managed to stockpile explosives at a cafe near the theater. Authorities are also looking into whether the militants had help from outside Russia.
An Oklahoman held hostage in a Moscow theater with his mail-order bride and her daughter was confirmed as one of the casualties Tuesday. Another American citizen, Natalya Aleshniya, a retired piano teacher from Sunnyvale, Calif., is now recovering in a Moscow hospital, reports
Sandy Booker, 49, an industrial electrician for General Motors in Oklahoma, was attending a show with his fiancée, Svetlana Gubareva, and her 13-year-old daughter when armed Chechen rebels raided the theater Wednesday night.
The child was killed by the fumes Russian authorities pumped into the theater before ending the 2½-day siege, said Lucy Shropshire, a Russian-American who helped arrange Booker's trips to meet potential brides.
Booker had already seen one disaster close up -- as a volunteer after the Oklahoma City bombing.
His sister, Bonny Galbrith, spoke with his fiancee.
"She said that he was the rock that they leaned on, and told them how to duck if there was gunfire," Galbraith told Palmer.
Booker - anticipating that he might die - left a message for his daughter. "He had written "I love you Deborah" on his arm," she said.
Russian authorities are still not forthcoming about what gas was used.
U.S. officials Monday said the lethal gas that killed 116 Moscow theater hostages may be an opiate related to morphine. Such substances not only kill pain and dull the senses but also can cause coma and death by shutting down breathing and circulation.
Doctors from a Western embassy examined some of the former hostages and concluded "the agent they were exposed to appears consistent with an opiate rather than a nerve agent," a U.S. embassy spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Opiates, including morphine and heroin, are derivatives of the opium poppy.
Moscow has refused to identify the gas, despite the heavy casualties that resulted from its use. Russian authorities did not tell medical officials what type of gas they pumped into the theater shortly before special forces troops raided it early Saturday, chief Moscow doctor Andrei Seltsovsky said.
The Russians might be refusing to name the gas because it is illegal — banned by international chemical weapons conventions. On the other hand, it could be a common chemical and easy to acquire, which they fear could wreak havoc in the wrong hands.
Relatives of the hostages held for more than two days in a Moscow theater waited for survivors to be released from hospitals Tuesday while politicians questioned how a large band of heavily armed rebels could have raided a building near the center of the capital.
Outside the theater, which was held for 58 hours by rebels demanding a Russian withdrawal from Chechnya, former hostage Anna Tunnika, 56, laid carnations on a growing pile. She worried about her daughter-in-law, who she said was in a coma from the gas Russian special forces released before storming the building to free the hostages.
"She's still lying in the hospital, in terrible condition, in critical condition," Tunnika said.
She said her daughter-in-law apparently was far more badly affected by the gas Russian special forces troops released before entering the theater before dawn Saturday, killing 50 hostage-takers and rescuing hundreds of their captives.
"She probably inhaled more gas into her body or she was in a more weakened condition," she said. "I was taken to a nearby hospital very nearby, and they took her farther away. Maybe that had some affect."
Booker made his latest trip to see if he could speed up marital arrangements for his fiancée, who had to go through a background check before moving to the United States.
A friend, John Day, said he became worried when Booker did not e-mail him from Russia as promised. Then he heard on television news that Booker was among the 800 people in the theater when it was seized by Chechen gunmen during a performance of the popular Russian musical "Nord-Ost," or "North-East."
"I didn't even think he liked the theater," Day said. "I'm sure it was his fiancée's idea. He usually just enjoyed museums there."
Day said Booker did not tell his mother or brother, who live in the Oklahoma City area, that he went to Russia.
"He wanted to keep this one a little low-key, and I understand that," he said. "That whole mail-order-bride thing was just controversial."
Booker met another woman on his first trip to Russia, but that relationship did not work out. This was his second trip to visit his fiancée, Day said.
Boris Nemtsov, a Russian lawmaker who heads a liberal political party, called late Monday for a parliamentary probe into security gaps that allowed more than 50 militants to seize hundreds of hostages at a theater less than three miles from the Kremlin.
"A thorough parliamentary investigation is needed to find out how bandits who were armed to the teeth and carrying hundreds of kilograms (pounds) of explosives could get into the center of Moscow unnoticed, seize a large theater and keep the entire country and the world on edge," Nemtsov said.
President Vladimir Putin called top officials including military and security leaders and the foreign minister to the Kremlin on Tuesday to discuss national security issues in light of terrorist threats, Russian news agencies reported.