THE FATE OF THE HOSTAGES.

The website Grani.ru has been keeping careful track, with daily updates, of the fate of the 980 hostages originally seized on October 23 at the Moscow theater at Dubrovka. A full list of the names of these hostages is provided by the website. To date, it reported on November 27, 136 of the hostages have been confirmed dead (a complete list of the names of the deceased is provided). In addition, Grani.ru underlined, the fate of sixty-nine former hostages remains unknown (a list of their names is also given). If these sixty-nine hostages should be proved to have died, then the death toll for the tragic incident would exceed 200.

In an interview with Novaya Gazeta (November 14), former hostage Il’ya Lysak, a musician who was playing in the orchestra of the musical, recalled: “On the second day, [Movsar] Baraev went up for some reason to the balcony and found a Ministry of Internal Affairs general there. He began to say loudly so that the entire hall could hear him: ‘Look who is sitting here! A major general! All my life I’ve dreamed of capturing a general.’ There was euphoria in his voice, he was so happy…. [The general] and his wife and son survived, but their daughter perished [from the effects of the gas].”