Thread: Russians
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Old 10-27-2002, 12:04 PM
Snibble Snibble is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3,380
Angry Russians

Well.. they ended the hostage crisis, but in a shameful way.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20021027/wl_nm/russia_siege_dc_60

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Only one of the hostages in the Moscow theater siege died of gunshot wounds, a senior medical official said Sunday, indicating that many dozens may have been poisoned by the gas used to knock out the guerrillas.

Asked how many of the victims died of the effects of gas used to paralyze the Chechen guerrillas holding more than 800 people hostage, Andrei Seltsovsky, chairman of the health committee of the city of Moscow, replied: "Of the 117 dead, one died of a gunshot wound."

Earlier, Health Ministry officials quoted by Russian news agencies put the death toll among hostages at 118.

The Kremlin and medical experts were silent Sunday about a television report that Russian special forces who stormed the theater in the early hours of Saturday had killed hostages when they used a sleep-inducing gas.

NTV television reported two hostages -- a Dutch national and a Kazakh national -- had died from gas poisoning.

The unidentified chemical was so powerful that the Chechen suicide fighters who had been filmed during the siege toying with detonators attached to explosives strapped to their waists had no time to set them off.

London-based security expert, Michael Yardley, said he believed the gas used was BZ, a colorless, odorless incapacitant with hallucinogenic properties, first used by the United States in Vietnam.

He said the symptoms displayed by the hostages in Moscow -- inability to walk, memory loss, fainting, heartbeat irregularities, sickness -- all pointed to BZ. According to the U.S. army the side effects last 60 hours, Yardley said.
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