…HOW MANY HOSTAGES WERE KILLED BY THE TERRORISTS DURING THE COURSE OF THE 57-HOUR SIEGE

?

None. The one young woman who did perish–Olga Romanova, a Moscow perfume saleswoman–had somehow made her way through the police cordon around the building and then managed to enter the theater. She was definitely not one of the hostages, was reportedly in a state of intoxication and behaved very aggressively toward the hostagetakers, who, for their part, became convinced that she had to be an FSB agent. They then proceeded to kill her (Newsru.com, October 25). During the well-known Budennovsk hostagetaking episode of 1995, the appearance of an FSB agent feigning intoxication had, the Moscow terrorists believed, signaled the beginning of a storming of the building.