Moscow theater hostage crisis

The Moscow theater hostage crisis (also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege) was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater by Chechen resistance fighters on 23 October 2002, which involved 850 hostages and ended with Russian security services killing or causing the death of at least 170 people. The attackers, led by Movsar Barayev, claimed allegiance to the Islamist separatist movement in Chechnya. They demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and an end to the Second Chechen War. Due to the layout of the theater, special forces would have had to fight through of corridor and advance up a well-defended staircase before they could reach the hall in which the hostages were held. The attackers had numerous explosives, with the most powerful in the center of the auditorium. Spetsnaz operators from Federal Security Service (FSB) Alpha and Vympel, supported by a Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) SOBR unit, pumped a chemical agent into the building's ventilation system and began the rescue operation. All 40 of the insurgents were shot dead when unconscious, and up to 130 hostages died during the siege, including 9 foreigners, due to the toxic substance pumped into the theater. The identity of the gas was not disclosed at the time, although it was believed by some to have been a fentanyl derivative, such as carfentanil. A study published in 2012 concluded that it had been a mixture of carfentanil and remifentanyl. The same study pointed out that in a 2011 case at the European Court of Human Rights, the Russian government stated that the aerosol used was a mixture of a fentanyl derivative and a chemical compound with a narcotic action. The hostages were seized on 23 October at the House of Culture of State Ball-Bearing Plant Number 1 in the Dubrovka area of Moscow about four kilometers south-east of the Moscow Kremlin. During Act II of a sold-out performance of Nord-Ost a little after 9:00 PM, 40–50 heavily armed and masked men and women drove in a bus to the theater and entered the main hall firing assault rifles in the air.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (15)

Beslan school siege

The Beslan school siege (also referred to as the Beslan school hostage crisis or the Beslan massacre) was a terrorist attack that started on 1 September 2004, lasted three days, involved the imprisonment of more than 1,100 people as hostages (including 777 children) and ended with the deaths of 333 people, 186 of them children, as well as 31 of the attackers. It is considered to be the deadliest school shooting in history.

Spetsnaz

Spetsnaz (Спецназ), are special forces in many post-Soviet states. Historically, this term referred to the Soviet Union's Spetsnaz GRU, special operations units of the GRU, the main military intelligence service. Today it refers to special forces branches and task forces subordinate to ministries including defence, internal affairs, or emergency situations in countries that have inherited their special purpose units from the now-defunct Soviet security agencies.