Sixty-seven hostages have been killed after Russian special forces stormed a Moscow theatre at dawn to end a three-day siege by Chechen rebels.Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasilyev said that 750 hostages held since Wednesday night by the heavily armed guerrillas in the capital had been saved in the operation.
Nearly all the rebels, 34, were killed.
"We saved more than 750 people...67 were lost," Mr Vasilyev told reporters outside the theatre. He added that no children were killed in the operation.
Many of the survivors were suffering from gas poisoning, supporting reports security forces had pumped knock-out fumes into the theatre before staging their morning attack.
Officials say that troops forced their way into the theatre after rebels, some with explosives wrapped around them, executed two male hostages to press their demand that Russia pull its troops out of their separatist southern homeland.
A woman hostage had also been shot dead earlier in the siege while trying to escape.
The end of the siege, which brought the distant Chechen war to the heart of Moscow, will be a relief to President Vladimir Putin whose own position was being tested by the crisis.
Initial suggestions were that security forces had used gas to overcome the heavily armed rebels, some of whom wore explosives wrapped around their bodies. They had threatened to blow up the entire building if security forces moved in.
A doctor from Moscow's main emergency Sklifosovsky hospital said he was treating 42 patients for gas poisoning.
The guerrilla commander, Movsar Barayev, was among those killed in an assault that Russia's deputy interior minister said had prevented a massacre of those seized while watching a popular Russian musical on Wednesday evening.Arctic explorer.
"We succeeded in preventing mass deaths and the collapse of the building which we had been threatened with," Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasilyev told reporters outside the theatre as ambulances took away survivors of the ordeal.
Officials said at least two hostages were executed by the guerrillas before the storming began. A woman hostage had been shot dead early in the siege while trying to escape.