MOSCOW, Sept 1 (AFP) - A group of extremists wearing belts laden with explosives took over 200 people hostage on Wednesday at a school in southern Russia close to Chechnya.
There has been no confirmation that the gunmen are Chechens but hostage-taking is a well-tried tactic in the Chechen rebels' bid for independence. Here is a review of the main cases perpetrated in the name of Chechen independence since 1991.
--1991--
November 8: A Tupolev 154 plane with 178 people on board, travelling from Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus to Yekaterinburg in the Urals, was hijacked by Chechen rebels and forced to fly towards Ankara. The hijackers finally released their captives in the Chechen capital Grozny. They were led by Shamil Basayev, a main player in the Chechen struggle.
--1995--
June 14: Following the deaths of 166 hostages from a group of around 1,500 people seized by Basayev in Budennovsk, southern Russia, the Chechens and Russians agreed a ceasefire, which was respected until December 1995.
--1996--
January 9-24: Chechen gunmen took 2,000 people hostage at Kizlyar in the Russian Caucasus republic of Dagestan. Most were freed but more than 100 were taken by their captors to Pervomayskaya, on the Dagestan-Chechen border, where between 50 and 100 were reported killed when Russian forces launched an assault.
January 16: Pro-Chechen Turkish gunmen hijacked a ferry in the port of Trabzon, on the Turkish Black Sea coast, on its way to the Russian resort of Sochi. Some 150 passengers, most of them Russians, were taken hostage and then released unharmed three days later. In March 1997, the nine hostage-takers received up to nine years in jail. They all escaped from prison two years later. Their leader, Ahmet Tokvan, was arrested as he tried to flee the country, imprisoned and then given amnesty.
--2001--
March 15: A Russian airliner was forced to fly from Turkey to the airport in Medina, Saudi Arabia, by three Chechens calling for an end to the war in their breakaway republic. Three people -- a hijacker, a stewardess and a Turkish passenger -- died when Saudi security forces stormed the plane.
April 23: Pro-Chechen Turkish gunmen took over 200 hostages in a big Istanbul hotel to protest against attacks in Chechnya. The hostage drama ended peacefully 12 hours later with the surrender of the assailants and the release of the hostages, including several foreign nationals. The head of the armed group was the same man who led the 1996 ferry hijacking.
July 31: Thirty people were held near Mineralnye Vody by gunmen calling for Chechen independence. All the hostages were freed after security forces launched a rescue operation during which one of the hijackers was killed.
--2002--
October 23: Some 40 Chechen rebels stormed a Moscow theatre and took more than 800 people hostage to press demands for an end to President Vladimir Putin's war in Chechnya.
Putin refused to budge and the standoff ended on October 26 when Russian special services pumped a poisonous gas into the building to knock out the hostage takers before storming it.
A total of 129 hostages and most of the rebels died. Two captives were shot dead by the hostage takers and the rest were killed by the gas. The Chechen guerrillas were shot dead by the Russian troops.