- A spokesman for the group told the BBC said they were Chechens and were demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from the breakaway province, where a conflict has been dragging on since President Putin sent troops back there in 1999.
The group stormed the stage in the middle of the performance. Witnesses at the scene said the attackers were mining the building and threatening to blow it up if security forces tried to intervene.
Gunshots have been heard but it is not clear if they came from inside or outside.
A man claiming to be the leader of the group - a nephew of Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev - said he and his followers were suicide attackers who had come to Moscow "not to survive, but to die".
Russian special forces have taken up positions around the building which is at a factory site in the south of the city. It is not clear if they have established any communications with the hostage-takers.
About 150 people, mainly women and children have been released. An eyewitness told the BBC Georgians were also being allowed to leave.
The group's leader told the Chechen rebel news agency Kavkaz-Tsentr that he and his "mujahideen" followers had mines strapped to their bodies and were mining the building.
He said they were accompanied by 40 widows of Chechen fighters.
He was named as Movsar Barayev, a nephew of the late Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev.
'Blood in the aisles'
The theatre, in a factory cultural centre on Melnikov Street, was holding a performance of a popular Russian musical, North-East.
"It was the beginning of the second act," a woman who managed to escape from the theatre told Russian media.
....The audience and those people released said the attackers, who consisted of men wearing combat uniforms and women in veils, had explosives strapped to their bodies.
Up to five actors who managed to escape from the building told reporters the entire building had been booby-trapped
....Our correspondent in Moscow says the Chechen rebels have been threatening to strike in Moscow, so this was probably a well-planned operation.
ADDITIONAL UPDATE
Per reader John Tobin, Pravda doesn't hesitate to characterize the situation as involving terrorists:
- A group of between 20 and 30 kamikaze Chechen terrorists stormed a packed Moscow theatre tonight, threatening to blow the building up unless their demands are met. It is feared that due to the fact that their demands are unrealistic, they will prefer to become martyrs, rather than prisoners.
Article comments
1 - John Tobin
You may want to include what the Russians are saying about this. Check out http://english.pravda.ru/
Moscow: Chechen terrorists take theatre
Chechen kamikaze squad take theatre with 1,000 hostages in Moscow
A group of between 20 and 30 kamikaze Chechen terrorists stormed a packed Moscow theatre tonight, threatening to blow the building up unless their demands are met. It is feared that due to the fact that their demands are unrealistic, they will prefer to become martyrs, rather than prisoners. ....
2 - Eric Olsen
Excellent John, thanks. You kind of figured the Russians wouldn't hesitate to characterize the situation as such.
3 - Tom
So do the Russkies continue to oppose us on Iraq, or do we team up and get to work on removing this blight once and for all? And when we're done with the filthy French, we can go after the Islamofacists
4 - Michael Levy
The headline over at The Guardian is "Muslim Peace Activists Detain Russian Theatergoers in Mass Protest"
Okay, I made that up. But it's almost believable.
5 - RC
Why such an increase in activity (Bali, Moscow, Phillippines) when it would appear such terrorist activity would bring more allies to our side? These nutjobs need a course in game theory or marketing or something.
One thing though. Were any of us calling the Chechens 'terrorists' prior to 9/11? Probably not. I think most American right/left-wingers thought the Moscow apartment bombings were some sort of Russian conspiracy to allow Putin to re-invade Chechnya.
Actually, considering this country's isolationist bent at the time, most of us probably didn't really care.
6 - pj
It does cause me to rethink my view of Russian's war in Chechnya, particularly the second war. If I were the Russians, I'd pump the theater full of carbon monoxide, which is odorless and invisible, then drag out the hostages and try to revive them with oxygen. The "mining" activity described in news reports might make that impossible though, because you'd have to move very quickly after everyone passed out to save the hostages.
7 - David Gillies
I certainly thought of the Chechen separatists as terrorists long before 9/11. As far as I'm concerned we should give Russia a free hand to deal with the problem in as brutal a fashion as they see fit.
8 - Thomas Dent
Does anyone here know any Chechen/Russian history? Does it make no difference at all that Russia/USSR has treated the people there like shit since the Russian invasion and conquest of the land a century and a half ago? In this case, as in the case of Ireland post potato famine, "root causes" demonstrably exist and have little to do with religious fanaticism.
If you have a little time to read history, try
http://www.newsbee.net/moscow/chhistory.html
in which you will find the elegant solution of Stalin to the "Islamic fundamentalists" of his day (i.e. Muslims who resisted his authority): deport the whole population hundreds of miles away. Compared to the Russian war in 1995, that was pretty humane.
9 - Eric Olsen
Everyone has legitimate grievances - what counts most is how you deal with them.