>Yesterday on Vremya, RTV, Channel one, Oct 29, 2002, they said the gas
>affected everyone in the theater and that the people who were taken out
>most
>quickly suffered much less than than people who were exposed for longer.
Are you in Russia, or are you catching Vremya elsewhere? If the former, where are you? Slava bogu, kazhetsya, chto ya skoro vernus' v stolitsu!
Special forces also knocked out the windows to let gas out. No one's identified the gas as of yet, but speculation has it that effective dose may have been near lethal dose.
News
>talked about the hostage takers placing explosives all over the theater and
>also connected to themselves.
> (The sheer amount of explosives and risk of accidental explosions may
>have hindered efforts to recue people.)
Yeah, the women especially (described in the Western press as "Chechen widows," as if they were there protesting Russian brutality, when several were the widows of mujaheedin) had explosives taped to them. Plus they rigged the building supports and mined the corridors. I find it hard to believe they wouldn't have detonated them given the chance.
> Also the news said at least some of the Chechens were reasonably
>well-spoken in Russian. (In some cases it may have been hard to sort out
>who
>was who.)
Barayev was 25/26. Presumably he went to a Soviet elementary school. He would know Russian. I think most Chechens know Russian, actually, but don't quote me on that. Chechnya is part of Russia, after all.
>Some hostages were let out for various reasons before the raid, in some
>cases
>early in the ordeal. I am looking for some accounts of the early stage
>negotiations to see what exactly happened on that front.
They let out some of the children and some people who were very ill. They said they were going to let foreigners out but never made good on that promise, as far as I know.
>
>Other comments I have seen mention:
>
>--dosing strength intended to knock out vigorous young adults that may have
>been too much for kids and the elderly.
Unless I'm mistaken, no children have died yet.
>
>--Application of gas indoors is a big experiment. This implies that
>previous
>test conditions would have been outdoors with much faster dispersion.
>
>No question in my mind: Russians should have been able to train their
>medical
>staff in advance to deal with the gas and should have dealt frankly with
>what
>it was for the public a LOT sooner than they have.
The counterargument for this is that releasing details of the gas would inform people contemplating similar actions of what to expect in the future. I tend to support this view, though if I were a relative of one of the dead I would probably feel differently, at least for the time being.
>
>And so far nobody with much clout is discussing the gas in terms of
>chemical
>warfare conventions....
>
>DoreneC
Chris Doss
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