Hostage negotiation, Russian-style:

Siege survivors ‘suffer poisoning’. CNN: Freed hostages were carried out of the theatre ‘inert and unmoving,’ and have all been hospitalized. Footage of the hostage-takers slain by Russian special forces showed them slumped in their seats in the theatre with bullet holes in their heads, apparently executed after they were rendered unconscious. Russian authorities have so far refused to reveal what gas was pumped into the theatre, even to doctors treating survivors. It is not clear how many of the more than one hundred hostages who died were killed by the Chechen guerrillas and how many succumbed to the gas. WBUR

Pictures from the siege’s end. BBC