On October 23, 2002, about 50 Chechen rebels storm a Moscow theater,
taking up to 700 people hostage during a sold-out performance of a
popular musical.

The second act of the musical “Nord Ost” was just beginning at the
Moscow Ball-Bearing Plant’s Palace of Culture when an armed man
walked onstage and fired a machine gun into the air. The terrorists—
including a number of women with explosives strapped to their bodies,
identified themselves as members of the Chechen Army. They had one
demand: that Russian military forces begin an immediate and complete
withdrawal from Chechnya, the war-torn region located north of the
Caucasus Mountains.

Russian special forces officers make their way toward the theater
seized by Chechen rebels.