AS 3am came, more than 800 people were struggling to overcome the intensifying waves of fear and exhaustion that were threatening their sanity. Some had succumbed already, launching suicidal escape attempts or attacking the terrorists — Chechen rebels, their bodies packed with explosives, who had held them hostage in a Moscow theatre for 54 hours.

Weak with hunger, frozen with worry, the hostages sat pinned to the red plush seats in which they had hoped to settle comfortably for a special evening out last Wednesday night. The only music they were hearing now was the occasional beeping of mobile phones. The orchestra pit was their lavatory, its foul stench polluting the stuffy air.

The hundreds of theatregoers trapped in the auditorium had no inkling that their assailants were dissolving into an angry panic, incensed by the leaked news that Russian government troops were about to storm the building.

“The terrorists pricked up their ears, but no storm followed,” said a soldier who took part in the final raid. Outside, the soldiers heard firing and a large explosion.

The shooting terrified the hostages, but it soon subsided. No one knew what to think. People tried in vain to keep themselves going, talking to each other, telling stories, anything to keep themselves from going over the edge. The rebels, nervous and jumpy, had begun drinking.

A man who had escaped earlier entered the building, looking for his son. He was bleeding slightly. The rebels took no chances. They shot him dead. One young man, sick with fright, tried to run out of the building. He, too, was killed.

They were not the first victims. A young woman, who appeared drunk, had burst into the building late on Wednesday night, inexplicably making her way past Russian cordons. Dozens of people had witnessed her walk through a police line.

“I am not afraid, what the hell are you doing here?” she said defiantly. She was led away to a side room. Four shots rang out, a grim warning to the others inside.

In the early hours of Saturday one little boy could no longer control himself. He picked up a bottle, ran down the theatre aisle and threw it at the gunmen. “Mummy, I don’t know what to do,” he shouted. The rebels opened fire but missed, instead hitting a man and a woman seated near by.

As dawn approached, a light mist suddenly started to come down from the ceiling. Some of the hostages’ mobile phones were still running. Natasha, a Russian woman, managed to get through to Echo of Moscow, the radio station that had broadcast live telephone conversations with dozens of trapped hostages from the beginning of the siege. This was the most terrifying phone call they had received yet. It was 5.30am.

Sitting with her sister, Yevgenia, Natasha told millions of Russians live on air: “They’re letting in gas.”

Like hundreds of the other hostages, she believed the strong-smelling gas was a sign that she would soon be dead. Her mind travelled back to the sailors on the Kursk submarine, who died, trapped on board, when it sank two years ago. The desperation was infectious. “All the people sitting in the hall, all of us are asking, we are hoping that we are not in the Kursk,” she told journalists.

As Natasha clung to her phone, the shooting started. She collapsed, sedated by the gas that had been pumped through a hole in the wall of the theatre by Russian special forces.

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