UK family reunited after Moscow hostage massacre

The British family caught in the Moscow hostage crisis has been finally reunited after their son was released from hospital overnight.

The news came as the number of hostage deaths is reported to have risen to 118 - almost double the initial figure of 67 put out by Russian authorities yesterday.

Mystery still surrounds the type of gas Russian special forces used to knock out the 50-odd terrorists and most of their 900 hostages.

British ambassador Sir Roderic Lyne says 20-year-old Oxford student Richard Low had been discharged from hospital and was safe and well with his parents Peter and Sidica.

"They're all in very good condition," he told the BBC.

Despite the high number of hostages killed, Sir Roderic says he considers the Russian military raid a success.

"We have ended up with a situation in which distressingly a large number of lives have been lost and that is of course very upsetting but at the same time there were several hundred people who came out of the theatre where there was a lot of explosives," he said.

But British counter-terrorism expert Michael Yardley says the operation was "not competent", saying casualties are too high and there was no effective containment of the area. He says the raid appears to have been rushed because Russian president Vladimir Putin was under strong pressure to end the matter quickly.

"There are signs that this was not an especially competent operation," he said, adding the Russians appeared to accept a higher death toll in resolving hostage situations than Western forces would.

Mr Yardley also confirmed many types of incapacitating gas, such as the one used by Russian authorities in the raid, could easily kill people.