Moscow Theater Hostage Taking Remembered

Flowers outside the Dubrovka center at a previous memorial event (RFE/RL)

October 26, 2006 -- Commemorations were held in Moscow today to remember the victims of a deadly theater hostage taking four years ago.

On October 23, 2002, Chechen separatist militants seized the Dubrovka theater with some 900 people inside, during a performance of the popular musical "Nord-Ost," and demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.

The hostage crisis ended three days later, when Russian special forces released a knockout gas and stormed the theater. At least 129 civilians and 42 militants were killed.

Friends and relatives gathered outside the theater today, observed a minute of silence, and lit candles for the victims.

Tatyana Karpova, co-director of an NGO dedicated to supporting the victims' families, said slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who tried to negotiate with the militants at Dubrovka, would be honored as a victim of the hostage-taking crisis.

Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of Russian policies in Chechnya, was killed in Moscow on October 7.

(RIA Novosti, ITAR-TASS)