The gang of 30 Chechen rebels gunmen who are holding 700 people hostage in a Moscow theatre have released 150 people.
They have threatened to blow up the building if security forces try to storm the premises.
The Chechen separatists say that they have mined the entire building and call themselves "suicide commandos of the 29th division," the journalist said.
The Chechen rebel's website said the raid was led by Movsar Barayev, the nephew of feared Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev, who was killed in June 2001 according to the Russian military. "They have one demand: stop the war and start a rapid withdrawal of the Russian occupiers in Chechnya," the site said.
A teenager released by the gang told Russian television that the armed gang wanted "the war to be stopped", an apparent reference to the long-running secessionist war in Russia's turbulent Chechnya province.
The teenager, among youngsters immediately released by the hostage-takers, said the group of 20-30 attackers had burst into the theatre, one firing a burst of bullets into the ceiling.
"He told all the actors to sit down on the front rows. Then women and men came in with masks.
"Some women were strapped with explosives and they said they would blow up the whole building in 10 minutes if the police started to storm the building," Denis Afanasyev, a teenager told Russian television.
Another student said the gunmen who burst in shouted out: "Release Chechnya and Russia from Russians. Stop the war in Chechnya."
Police marksmen took up position on roof tops and other vantage points overlooking the theatre, known as the former House of Culture in Melnikov Street in southeast Moscow.
Two armoured personnel-carriers took up position in front of the main entrance to the theatre, while around 100 heavily armed soldiers have also arrived at the scene.
President Vladimir Putin, who had been due to leave on an official visit to Europe tomorrow, was informed of the incident and returned to the Kremlin for a crisis session with security chiefs.
AFP