Smash hit

Her phone was picked up by Anya Andreyanova, a reporter for the Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper. “We are begging,” she screamed. “Please, guys, don’t leave us.”

Amid more shots and a loud explosion, she shouted, desperate to keep the slender thread between her and journalists in a studio miles away intact. “Can you hear this?” she asked them. “We are about to be blown to the Devil.” The gas worked fast. Oleg Zyogonov pressed a bandana to his nose in order to stay awake as hundreds slumped in their seats:

“I passed out and then regained consciousness, this happened several times. It was as if I had drunk a ton of vodka. I heard shouts and lots of gunshots, as in a fight,” he said.

At the sides of the hall, special troops crawled in through small passageways. This was to be the most risky operation most of them would have ever signed up for. The lives of more than 800 people depended on them.

Moreover, the Government’s future could be decided by their actions. The President of Russia needed them to get it right. They were under almost intolerable pressure to perform.

Once in the building, their actions were swift and ruthless. “We managed to liquidate the female kamikaze — soldiers penetrated into the hall through special crawlways and shot the sleeping terrorists point-blank. Right at the temple,” a soldier who took part in the raid said. “I agree that it’s cruel, but when you see a man with two kilograms of plastic strapped to the body, there is no other way to neutralise him. Besides, panic spread immediately.”

The operation began to fray at the edges, marred by poor planning, exactly what many relatives of hostages had said that they were afraid of. “Here, we once again suffered from our constant mistake: lack of co-ordination between the actions of subdivisions,” the soldier said.

As a result, the terrorists in the corridor began to fire at the troops and some of the hostages, those unaffected by the gas, rushed out of the auditorium and ran against special forces blocking the exits.

The theatre was in chaos. Russian special forces were pouring into the building. Some fired at the balconies, where many of the children were sitting. Several of the terrorists escaped. Five female hostages ran from the theatre, covering their faces, into the arms of Russian soldiers.

At 7.10am a handful of the gunmen were led out of the theatre with their hands behind their backs. Movsar Barayev, their leader, lay dead inside with a bottle of cognac in his hands. Soldiers found syringes near the bodies of the other rebels.

Bewildered and wobbly, the hostages walked or were carried out of the theatre, unsteadily tasting fresh air for the first time in 2½ days. They were rushed to hospitals across the city. Moscow was overjoyed. There were reports of only ten deaths, a tiny proportion of the 800-plus people who had been taken captive.

But the exhilaration was shortlived. The gas that Russian soldiers had let seep into the building in order to pacify the gunmen was so strong that it killed more than a hundred hostages. While some families rejoiced, others planned funerals.

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