Saturday 1 p.m. ET
It's very bad, but it could have been worse:
- The number of hostages killed after being held hostage by Chechen rebels in a Moscow theater rose to 90, the Russian Health Ministry said Saturday, according to Russian news agencies.
Earlier, Russian officials said 67 hostages were dead after special forces stormed the theater, freeing more than 700 captives and killing 50 rebels
Nearly all the survivors were hospitalized after being freed, which came after Russian forces used sleeping gas to immobilize inside the theater.
Several of the hostages who were taken to hospitals in Moscow were unconscious or had difficulty walking.
Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasilyev said 67 hostages were killed, but did not specify whether that figure included people known to have been killed by the rebels before Saturday's raid. He said no children or foreigners were among the dead.
Vasilyev said about 750 other hostages were freed and 34 of the hostage-takers were killed, though the Federal Security Service later said 50 captors died, including 18 women, and three were detained, the Interfax news agency reported.
Vasilyev confirmed a special gas was used to knock out those inside the theater, but did not say what the substance was.
Early Thursday morning, reader PJ suggested gas may be the answer: he was right.
More from German Deutsche Welle:
- President Vladimer Putin has visited some of the survivers of the Moscow theatre siege at one of the city's hospitals. Some of the survivers are reported to have died in hospital, as a result of heart related problems, induced by the ordeal and others from the pumped-in gas. Several died when they unintentially set off booby-traps, when the rescue began. Officials gave no details of other dead hostages, but Australian and British diplomats said they had been told none of the estimated 75 foreign captives were among them.
- Within hours of the hostage drama in Moscow ending, Russian troops launched a major offensive in Chechnya. A military spokesman in the Chechen capital, Grozny confirmed special units throughout the republic had launched the offensive.
Pravda has a report from a journalist who was among the hostages:
- Olga Chernyak, a journalist from the Russian news agency Interfax who was among the hostages held by the terrorists in the theatre within the past three days, says that all hostages would die if the building wasn’t stormed. Olga is currently in the hospital.
Article comments