23 October — at 9:15 p.m., armed men in camouflage burst into the building of the Dubrovka Theater Center.
At that time, the musical “Nord-Ost” was being performed at the cultural center, and more than 700 people were in the hall. The terrorists declared everyone—both audience members and theater staff—hostages and began mining the building.
At 10:00 p.m., it became known that the theater building had been seized by a unit of Chechen militants led by Movsar Barayev; among the terrorists were female suicide bombers strapped with explosives. At 7:00 p.m. the next day, the Qatari TV channel Al Jazeera aired an address by Movsar Barayev’s militants, recorded several days before the seizure of the cultural center: the terrorists declared themselves suicide bombers and demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.
From 7:00 p.m. until midnight, unsuccessful attempts continued to persuade the militants to accept food and water for the hostages.
Those involved in the negotiations included State Duma deputy from Chechnya Aslambek Aslakhanov, Iosif Kobzon, British journalist Mark Franchetti, and two Red Cross doctors. On 25 October at 1:00 a.m., the terrorists allowed into the building Leonid Roshal, head of the emergency surgery and trauma department of the Disaster Medicine Center.
He brought medicines to the hostages and provided them with first medical aid. In the morning, a spontaneous rally formed near the cordon by the cultural center. Relatives and loved ones of the hostages demanded that all the terrorists’ demands be met.
At 3:00 p.m., Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting in the Kremlin with the heads of the Interior Ministry and the FSB. Following the meeting, FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev said that the authorities were ready to spare the terrorists’ lives if they released all the hostages.
On 26 October at 5:30 a.m., three explosions and several bursts of automatic gunfire were heard near the cultural center building. At around 6:00 a.m., special forces began an assault, during which a nerve agent gas was used. At 6:30 a.m., an official FSB representative reported that the Theater Center was under the control of the security services, Movsar Barayev and most of the terrorists had been eliminated. The number of neutralized terrorists in the Dubrovka Theater Center building was 50 people—18 women and 32 men.
On 7 November 2002, the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office published a list of citizens who died as a result of the actions of the terrorists who seized the Dubrovka Theater Center. According to official data, 130 hostages were killed, including 10 children.