Russia's secrecy on gas cost lives, says U.S. ambassador

MOSCOW, October 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Russian security forces arrested Tuesday, October 29, thirty Russian citizens - including several security officers - on suspicion of helping the Chechen fighters who took 800 people hostage in a Moscow theater and demanded an end to the bloody Russian war in Chechnya.

The suspects include security officials and political advisers, accused of having allegedly colluded with the Chechen hostage-takers, who stormed the packed theater last week demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya, BBC News Online reported.

Russian media have been reporting that the Chechen fighters were briefed by security insiders about the authorities' handling of the crisis.

In an operation described as "callous", Russian special forces stormed the theater after pumping a controversial debilitating gas, killing at least 113 hostages and shooting dead most of the independence-seeking fighters.

Russian Interior Minister, Boris Gryzlov, said his forces were involved in an "unprecedented operation" to identify a network of helpers in Moscow and the surrounding.

A government source, who confirmed to the BBC that security officials were among those arrested, said there had been far too many self-appointed 'helpers' milling about at the rescue headquarters.

A government-sponsored newspaper reported that the Chechen fighters had been briefed about what was going on outside by what it described as an "analytical center".

The center was collecting information from various sources - including the rescue headquarters - processing it and sending instructions to the fighters.

A former commander of an elite special forces unit has also been quoted as saying that civil servants and security forces collaborators "helped the Chechen fighters to rent premises to store arms and explosives".

Liberal members of parliament are demanding an inquiry into the way the crisis was handled - in reference to the cold-blooded way in which Russian authorities opted to end the hostage-taking crisis.

The Russian military has also intensified its war on independence fighters in Chechnya itself, with reports that around 100 Chechens had been detained in the republic in the past 24 hours.

On Tuesday, Chechen fighters downed a Russian helicopter near the main military base outside the capital Grozny, killing all four on board.

Questions are still being asked about the gas that Russian forces used to end the hostage-taking crisis - reportedly a kind of bio or chemical weapon developed by Russia during the Cold War. But Russian authorities have refused to identify the gas which claimed the lives of at least 113 hostages.

Slamming the secrecy surrounding the gas, U.S. Ambassador in Moscow Alexander Vershbow stressed Tuesday that if medical workers had a little more information about the gas, a few more hostages might have survived.

He criticized Russia's refusal to name the gas it used, which proved poisonous, saying the secrecy cost lives.

Medical experts in Germany say siege victims being treated in Munich have shown traces of halothane in their blood and urine - an anesthetic now rarely used in west European hospitals.

Earlier, the U.S. embassy in Moscow said its physicians believed the opium-based gas fentanyl was pumped into the theater.

The BBC's Jonathan Charles in Moscow says the high death toll continues to make the raid controversial, but the strategy is now being studied by foreign intelligence agencies.

They are examining whether the deployment of gas might prove helpful if they are ever faced with similar sieges.

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