Hostages at breaking point as clock ticks
People huddle in the middle of a cavernous theatre in Moscow, trying to comfort other members of their new-found "family" thrown together after a Wednesday night out at a stage musical was suddenly transformed into a terrifying siege.
A Russian doctor who spent over six hours in the theatre on Thursday said hundreds of the hostages being held by a Chechen "suicide squad" were struggling to keep going as the minutes, hours and days dragged by. "They have become a kind of family. Some of them even argue with each other. They try to laugh. They are just trying to survive," Dr Leonid Roshal, chairman of the International Committee for Paediatric Disasters, said.
