Details emerging about hostages' 58 hours of fear and hunger

MOSCOW -- Just after the tap dance that kicks off the second act of Russia's hit musical "Nord-Ost," the savage Chechen war swept in from 900 miles away and seized the spotlight.

Masked gunmen burst on stage and into the audience, firing automatic rifles into the air and taking about 800 people hostage last Wednesday. For those inside for the 323rd performance of the show, the next 58 hours were filled with fear and hunger, as their captors -- men and women demanding an end to the war in Chechnya -- repeatedly warned the building was mined and they had come to die.

Two days after special forces troops released an incapacitating gas into the auditorium and stormed the building, details began to emerge Monday of the events that left 118 civilians dead, 116 from the gas. However, hundreds of survivors remain in tightly guarded hospitals and the government has refused to identify the gas responsible for all but two hostage deaths.

Jumped onto stage

Actor Mark Podlesny, 22, who played a tap-dancing pilot, was about to say his line when a masked gunman in camouflage jumped on stage.

The gunman fired in the air, as more hostage-takers, including women dressed head-to-toe in black, appeared. They ordered the actors into the front row.

"They said, 'Everyone put your hands behind your head,' and those who didn't were beaten on the head with rifle butts," recalled Yelena Zinovyeva, 18, who was in the audience.

The gunmen told everyone to throw their cell phones and bags into the aisle, then separated the women from the men, she said.

About two hours later, the gunmen handed out the phones, telling people to call their loved ones and "say goodbye," Zinovyeva said.

Explosives in orchestra pit

As the female hostage-takers stood guard and a large explosive device was placed in the center of the orchestra, they told their captives of the war in Chechnya and the relatives they had lost.

Throughout the night, the gunmen freed groups of children and a few women. A 26-year-old woman who inexplicably entered the theater was shot and killed.

Around midday Thursday, lawmaker and singer Iosif Kobzon entered for the first face-to-face negotiations and secured the release of five hostages. The meeting was the start of intensive mediation efforts.

Meanwhile, hostage-takers allowed people to go to the bathroom in small groups, a gunman posted outside the bathroom door. Zinovyeva and her friend Svetlana Kononova saw an opportunity to escape.

They decided to go for it Thursday evening when they saw the female hostage-takers grow agitated, fingering detonators on explosives strapped to their waists.

The two jumped from the third-floor bathroom window onto an overhang and then to the ground.

From then on, hostages were forced to use the orchestra pit as a toilet.

At about 7 p.m. Friday, the hostage-takers warned that if a Putin representative did not call by 10 p.m., they would begin executing hostages, the actor Podlesny recalled.

Soon after, a hostage charged at one of the captors with a bottle, Podlesny said. A female hostage-taker shot at him and missed, instead hitting a woman in the abdomen and a man in the eye. The two were taken away by medical personnel at 2:45 a.m., and both reportedly survived.

No mass executions

Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatch-enko said a rescue operation was launched after the rebels began executing captives. However, hostages later said no mass executions had begun.

In preparation for the rescue, special forces began pumping an incapacitating gas into the theater. Many passed out.

At around 5:15 a.m. Saturday, about 200 officers from special anti-terrorist units rushed into the building, clearing the way with stun grenades.

Movsar Barayev, the Chechens' leader, and his men reportedly fired several shots before they were killed.

The commandos then finished off some of the Chechens with shots to their heads.