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U.S. questions secrecy about gas in theater
Compiled from Times wires MOSCOW -- Weeping relatives bent over the uniformed body of Col. Konstantin Litvinov and threw handfuls of dirt onto his coffin Tuesday as Russians began to bury the hostages killed during a 58-hour standoff with Chechen rebels. For the first time, the United States questioned Russia's refusal to identify the gas used in the rescue. "It's clear that perhaps with a little more information, at least a few more of the hostages may have survived," U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said. But a senior Russian official issued the Kremlin's strongest defense yet of the decision to fill the Moscow theater with a secret gas before special forces raided it early Saturday, rescuing hundreds and killing 50 of their captors. The incapacitating gas was intended to prevent the hostage-takers from triggering explosives strapped to their waists and rigged around the theater. It worked but it also knocked out most of the hostages, killing 116. Two other hostages died from gunshot wounds. Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov told the ITAR-Tass news agency that several dozen people had been detained in Moscow on suspicion of helping organize the takeover. They included a group of Chechens picked up in a minibus that allegedly had traces of TNT, the Interfax news agency reported. As of Tuesday, 245 rescued hostages remained hospitalized, 16 in serious condition, Interfax reported. A total of 418 patients have been released. "There was not one scenario that could have guaranteed the lives of the hostages and the special forces in a theater filled with 330 pounds of explosive devices," said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin. At a Moscow cemetery, Russian soldiers in heavy green coats marched under gray, rainy skies to pay their final respects to Litvinov, who was in the audience of the Nord-Ost musical production with friends when the terrorists struck. Litvinov's body was laid out in uniform, surrounded by dozens of red carnations, as his anguished wife and grown children stood nearby. Across town, friends of a 25-year-old engineer and theater lover, identified by Russian television as Alexei Batchkov, gathered on the muddy paths of the Kuzminskoye cemetery around a freshly dug grave. Russian television showed them throwing clumps of earth over the coffin. While the Saturday rescue operation has been criticized in the Western media, most Russians appear to have accepted the losses. An attempt by the liberal Union of Right Forces faction in the Russian Parliament to set up a commission to investigate all aspects of the hostage crisis -- including the rescue -- looked doomed when it failed to win support of key centrist parties Tuesday. "Fatalities would have been inevitable in any case," said Andrei Seltsovsky, chief of Moscow's health department, according to Interfax. "If the terrorists had simply left the building and surrendered to the authorities, many seriously ill people would have remained inside." Russian authorities have provided the U.S. Embassy with some information about the effects of the gas used, but have not told them the name of the agent despite repeated requests. In Washington, U.S. officials said Tuesday the gas was an aerosol form of fentanyl, a fast-acting opiate that has many medical applications, or possibly a derivative of it. The rebels who seized the Moscow theater Oct. 23 demanded that Putin withdraw Russian troops from Chechnya, where the most recent war began in 1999. AMERICAN CONFIRMED KILLED: An American who was visiting Moscow to see his fiancee was confirmed to have been killed in the Moscow theater raid, his family said Tuesday. Relatives of Sandy Booker told Oklahoma City television station KWTV that U.S. consular officials called to tell them Booker had died. Booker's fiancee, Svetlana Gubareva, who also was exposed to fumes, identified his body after regaining consciousness. Booker, a 49-year-old industrial electrician for General Motors, met Gubareva through a mail-order bride arrangement and had gone to Russia to visit her and to speed up the red tape so she could join him in the United States. Gubareva's 13-year-old daughter, who went to the theater with the couple, also was killed. RUSSIAN HELICOPTER SHOT DOWN: A Russian helicopter was shot down Tuesday in Chechnya by a missile, killing all three crew and one passenger aboard, an emergency official said. Chechen rebels have shot down several Russian helicopters during the two wars in the region in the past decade.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
