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116 Hostages in Moscow May Have Died of Nerve Gas

Aired October 27, 2002 - 11:16   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: We want to tell you a little bit more about the situation in Chechnya. If you remember, the Moscow theater where Soviet (sic) people had to go in and raid that theater to try and rescue the more than 700 people who were being held hostage by the Chechen rebels. And we know that that death toll has gone up considerably overnight to 118. What we are now learning is that 116 of those people possibly died from the gas that they had put in. They were telling us that they had put that -- sprayed it in there, so to speak, in order to neutralize the hostage-takers. We are learning that some of the hostages died from that. There was one death reported also from the shooting that went on afterwards.
So we have our Mike Hanna on the scene and we are going to go there a little bit later for a live report and much more detail on this.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired October 27, 2002 - 11:16   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: We want to tell you a little bit more about the situation in Chechnya. If you remember, the Moscow theater where Soviet (sic) people had to go in and raid that theater to try and rescue the more than 700 people who were being held hostage by the Chechen rebels. And we know that that death toll has gone up considerably overnight to 118. What we are now learning is that 116 of those people possibly died from the gas that they had put in. They were telling us that they had put that -- sprayed it in there, so to speak, in order to neutralize the hostage-takers. We are learning that some of the hostages died from that. There was one death reported also from the shooting that went on afterwards.
So we have our Mike Hanna on the scene and we are going to go there a little bit later for a live report and much more detail on this.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com