Chechen gunmen hold 700 hostage in Moscow theatre

Up to 40 heavily-armed masked men and women, believed to be Chechen rebels, are threatening to blow up 700 hostages in a Moscow theatre unless Russian troops withdraw immediately from the breakaway republic.

The gunmen stormed the former House of Culture on Melnikova Street in south-east Moscow, during a performance of a popular musical Nord-Ost. The attackers fired shots and ordered everyone to be seated.

Witnesses said they released about 20 children and Muslims, before planting booby traps around the 1,000-seat theatre's doors and windows. One witness said the guerrillas strapped explosives to the internal supporting columns of the theatre and threatened to blow up the building if police stormed it.

There were reports that at least one Russian police officer had been killed and that an explosion was heard in the vicinity of the theatre early this morning.

Late last night, two leading members of the Chechen community went in to seek negotiations. Aslanbek Aslakhanov, the deputy who represents Chechnya in the State Duma lower house of parliament, and Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former speaker of parliament, both have experience of negotiating in hostage dramas.

One hostage, speaking by mobile phone from inside the building, pleaded live on Russian television for the security forces not to storm the building.

"Please to not start storming. There are a lot of explosives. Don't open fire on them. I am very scared, I ask you please do not start attacking," said Tatyana Solnyshkina. According to one Russian news agency report the attackers laid mines around the theatre but that could not be verified.

A Chechen rebel-sponsored website (www.kavkaz.org) claimed it had carried out the raid and said it was under the command of Movsar Barayev, a Chechen warlord whose uncle Arbi Barayev was killed fighting Russian troops last year.

The website group said the theatre was occupied by "Chechen mujahedin" who are ready to die at any moment. It said: "There is only one demand – an end to the war and the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya." It added: "The mujahedin came to Moscow not to live, but to die."

The area was cordoned off by police. Russian TV said the country's only specialised anti-terrorist squad, the Alpha brigade, was on the scene and all officers of the FSB security service had been ordered to report for duty.

President Vladimir Putin met senior advisers in the Kremlin.

Moscow has fought two wars against secessionist Chechnya in the past decade, the latest for three years.

Chechen rebels have resorted to mass hostage taking in the past, most spectacularly in 1995 when warlord Shamil Basayev seized hundreds of people in a hospital in Budyonnovsk, in the southern Russian region of Stavropol.