Chechnya

People lay flowers outside a theater, which Chechen gunmen seized in 2002, as the relatives of the slain hostages mark the tragedy's 7th anniversary, Moscow, Monday, Oct. 26, 2009. The attack took place late Oct. 23, 2002, during the second act of the musical 'Nord-Ost', and the gunmen took about 800 people hostage in an audacious attempt to prod Russian authorities into ending the war in Chechnya. Early Saturday, Oct. 26, 2002, Russian special forces pumped a narcotic gas into the theater to knock out the hostage-takers, and then stormed the building, killing all 40 hostage-takers; 129 hostages died, almost all from the effects of the gas.