Five armed Russian sailors were arrested Saturday hours after they allegedly killed a guard and seized 47 hostages in a remote northern region, a Russian news agency reported.
All the hostages were released unharmed, and no hostage-takers were hurt when they were overpowered by special troops of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, Interfax said.The sailors had demanded a plane to take them to the southern Russian region of Dagestan, a troubled area in the Caucasus mountains, Interfax said, citing FSB director Vladimir Putin.
The hostage-taking apparently stemmed from a suspected car-bomb explosion that killed at least 17 people in the capital of Dagestan on Friday. One of the sailors said a relative may have died in the blast. The others were described as participating out of solidarity.
Putin said the sailors, believed to be from Dagestan, began their rampage by killing a guard and taking a small cache of arms from the base where they were stationed in Novaya Zemlya, an island in the Barents Sea about 1,200 miles north of Moscow.
They later seized 40 students, six teachers and one other sailor from the small community of Rogachevo, the official said.
A short time later, FSB troops arrived and began negotiating with the hostage-takers. After several hours, the troops carried out a successful operation to free the hostages and seize the five sailors, Interfax reported.