Chechen gunmen reached their homeland and released their last captives Tuesday, ending a weeklong hostage crisis.
About 150 people, apparently all volunteers, had accompanied the rebels as human shields on a bus trip from the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk to Chechnya after Russian authorities granted the gunmen free passage home.The ITAR-Tass news agency and national television reported late Tuesday that the last hostages had been freed. They were returning on buses to the nearby republic of Dagestan, according to the Russian Interior Ministry.
The gunmen had held up to 2,000 people hostage in a hospital in Budyonnovsk, demanding an end to Russia's war against their separatist republic. About 100 people died when the Chechens stormed the city last Wednesday, and dozens more were killed or wounded Saturday when Russian troops tried to free the hostages.
The Chechens released most hostages Monday after Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin agreed in nationally televised negotiations to declare a cease-fire in Chechnya, resume peace talks and grant the gunmen safe passage.
The final release late Tuesday occurred near Vedeno, a town in the rebel-controlled southern mountains where the gunmen had said they planned to escape, according to a report on NTV television.
The rebels apparently were headed for the surrounding hills, but Interior Ministry officials had said troops were monitoring the column to prevent the rebels from escaping.
In past hostage incidents, Russian authorities have capitulated to terrorists' demands only to attack them later.
Earlier, the Chechens had sent scout cars ahead of the convoy into Chechnya and apparently did not like what they saw. They stopped their convoy before reaching the border and demanded new promises of safe passage, said Vladimir Vasilyev of the Interior Ministry in Moscow.
The buses had pulled out of Budyonnovsk with at least 73 Chechen rebels and 114 civilians who agreed to accompany them, regional officials said. News reports put the number of volunteers at about 150.
Police suggested the volunteers - who included local officials, journalists, parliament members and others - had boarded at their own risk.
Chechnya is about 90 miles by air from Budyonnovsk. But the convoy was stopped by troops at the border of North Ossetia, which borders Chechnya, and told to take a longer, 120-mile route through the Russian republic of Dagestan, ITAR-Tass said. The buses then doubled back, reaching Dagestan after nine hours on winding back-country roads.
After the gunmen left the hospital in Budyonnovsk, hundreds of hostages emerged to waiting crowds of relatives and friends. Amid tearful reunions, loud arguments broke out among some former hostages who were sympathetic to the Chechens, and other residents angered by the Chechens' actions.
"The Chechens treated us well," said 33-year-old pediatrician Natalya Serebryakova.
"If the Chechens promised something, they did it. When (the Russians) started to fire shells . . . into a maternity ward, the Chechens jumped on the bed and covered infants with their own bodies."
About 50 bodies of civilians were inside the hospital, local officials said Monday.
Chernomyrdin met in the Kremlin with President Boris Yeltsin Tuesday to discuss the crisis.
In the Chechen capital, Grozny, peace talks agreed to during the standoff resumedTuesday between a high-level Russian delegation and a group sent by Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev. Vyacheslav Mikhailov, Russia's first deputy minister on ethnic affairs, told ITAR-Tass that the first day of talks Monday went well.
The hostage-taking was the first major rebel attack outside of Chech-nya. Russian troops moved into Chechnya in December to put down Dudayev's secessionist regime. Thousands have been killed in fighting.