Armed assault to free hostages was planned from the outset

There is some evidence that the armed assault to end the Moscow hostage crisis was decided only shortly after the Chechen gunmen had stormed the theatre. According to sources cited by the daily Moscowskij Komsomolez, the Russian secret service FSB calculated that some 150 hostages would be killed in such an operation, a number which the FSB apparently found acceptable.

As early as Thursday morning, the correspondent of the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau saw sewage vehicles near the theatre. Special forces were examining underground central heating pipes, sewers and air shafts leading inside the theatre and its auditorium, where the Chechens were holding 700 people hostage. On Thursday night, the anti-terror units 'Alpha' and ' practised for the assault. The newspaper Kommersant reported that the 'Meridian' - a theatre in north-east Moscow and similar to the one sieged by the Chechens - had been chosen as a site for rehearsing the strike.

As early as Friday night, the assault was ordered to take place the following morning. Alpha units and units of the Djerjinski division of the Home Office were waiting to receive orders in Melnikova Street, which leads to the theatre. At four a.m., dozens of Alpha troups, in black gear, wearing helmets and bullet-proof jackets disembarked from the lorries and launched the attack. At half past five Alpha troups pumped nerve gas into the auditorium and used explosives to blow their way free into the theatre.

Inside the theatre both the hostages and the Chechens, armed with explosives, were already unconscious. 'We shot them in their temples from next to no distance', an Alpha officer told Moscowskij Komsomolez when he described how they had carried out the operation. 'It was dreadful but as they had strapped two kilos of explosives to their bodies, we had no choice.' If the explosives had gone off, they would probably have destroyed the whole building, burying the hostages in its ruins.

However, far from everything happened as planned. In another part of the building, the male hostage-takers discovered some of the approaching Alpha units and started heavy shooting. Russian officers were killed, although this was denied in official statements. The elite troops, on the other hand, did not only kill 50 hostage takers but also many of the hostages whom they had come to rescue. 'We were not able to tell who were hostages and who were not. There were a large number of dead and casualties', an Alpha-officer told a reporter of the Los Angeles Times.

Source: Florian Hassel in Frankfurter Rundschau (28 October 2002)