Russia in mourning as death toll up to 118

The wail of sirens and the cries of relatives mixed outside a Moscow hospital today when doctors today began releasing some of the hundreds of people who had been treated there after the Moscow theatre hostage crisis.

Authorities had done little to ease the anxiety of hostage relatives after a special forces raid on the theatre Saturday killed most of the hostage-takers and the freed captives were taken to hospitals, most of them suffering from sleeping gas that had been sprayed through the building before the storming.

Officials said at least 118 hostages died in the crisis.

Irina Ramtsova waited outside the black iron gates of City Clinical Hospital No. 13 with pictures of her father, Fyodor, a trumpet player at the theatre seized by heavily armed Chechen rebels Wednesday.

“We keep calling and calling and there is no information,” she said.

The family last heard from him when he called on his mobile phone during the 58-hour siege, saying he was sitting next to one of the bombs the hostage takers were threatening to detonate. Official hotlines have been no help, she said.

Like Ramtsova, many were unsure where their relatives were, and came because the bulk of the survivors needing medical attention – some 320 – were at that hospital.

“They are hostages again,” one of the relatives shouted to the armed guards behind the gate.

In the afternoon, a few ex-hostages began to come out, facing a cold light rain and a crowd of frantic relatives and jostling journalists, the chaos augmented by the sirens of emergency vehicles passing by.

The scene was more calm at another hospital, directly across from the theatre that had been raided.

Among those let out of that clinic, Hospital No. 1 for War Veterans, was Georgy Vasilyev, the producer of ”Nord-Ost,” the musical that was in progress when the theatre was seized.

He recalled the ordeal as a “bardak,” Russian slang for complete chaos. He said he had tried to talk to the gunmen, but with little success, except for one of the female hostage-takers who gave him a prayer written in Arabic, suggesting that he read it to purify himself before death.

Officials said 50 of the gunmen were killed in the storming. Russian news agencies cited the Health Ministry as saying the number of dead hostages was 118, a number that apparently included at least three who were known to have been killed before the storming.

About 750 hostages were reported to have been freed in the operation.

Russian special forces poured an incapacitating gas into the theatre and then moved in around 5.15am (1.15afm Irish time) to kill most of the roughly 50 hostage-takers and free 750 people.

The gas left many people unconscious and they had to be carried from the theatre suffering from symptoms of poisoning. Authorities have not said what was in the gas.

Nine hostages died because of heart problems, shock or lack of medicine, Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasilyev said on Saturday, but how the others died was not specified.

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Vasilyev as saying none of the victims died from gas poisoning.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry said early today that a Dutch citizen, Natalja Zjirov, was among those hostages who died. No other deaths among the 71 foreigners among the hostages were known.

President Vladimir Putin, who visited some of the injured today, declared tomorrow a national day of mourning for the dead. As the troops surrounding the theatre began to withdraw, people began placing flowers around the site.

Besides the 50 assailants the Federal Security Service said were killed at the theatre – several with bullets to the head, apparently as they lay incapacitated from the gas – officials said three other gunmen were captured, and authorities searched the city for accomplices and gunmen who may have escaped.

The attackers, 18 of whom were women who said they were widows of Chechens killed by Russian forces, burst into the theatre during a performance of the popular Russian musical Nord-Ost, some of them with explosives strapped to their bodies.

They mined the theatre and threatened to blow it up unless President Vladimir Putin withdrew Russian troops from the rebellious region of Chechnya.