Timeline Saturday 26 October 2002

Events on Saturday 26 October 2002 1

• 2002 Moscow theatre hostage crisis Chechen militants seize a packed theatre On 23 October 2002 about 40 armed Chechen militants took some 850 people hostage during a musical at the Dubrovka theatre in Moscow, demanding a withdrawal from Chechnya. After a standoff of nearly three days, Russian special forces pumped an undisclosed aerosol anaesthetic into the hall and stormed it. All the attackers and around 130 hostages died, almost all of them from the gas.