MOSCOW, October 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - All but one of the 118 hostages who died in a special forces operation to rescue them from Chechen hostage-takers succumbed to gas poisoning, the Moscow chief medical officer said Sunday, October 27.

One hostage died from bullet wounds, doctor Andrei Seltsovsky said, according to Interfax news agency.

He said all 117 hostages died as a result of the Russian rescue operation.

The Russian health ministry said earlier Sunday that 118 hostages had died since Russian special forces Saturday stormed the Moscow theatre where the hostages were being held.

Meanwhile, Seltsovsky said that 150 people are in intensive care, 45 people of them in a serious condition, after being rescued from Chechen hostage-takers, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP), quoting Interfax.

Within the same context, the Russian media said that four foreign hostages died after Russian special forces stormed a Moscow theatre where they were being held captive, including a Dutch woman and a Kazakh teenager who succumbed to gas poisoning.

Natalja Zjirov, 38, a Dutch national of Russian origin, died in hospital late on Saturday, Interfax news agency quoted a diplomat at the Dutch Embassy in Moscow as saying.

A 13-year-old Kazakh girl, Alexandra Litiaga, also died in hospital, local media quoted the Kazakhstan Foreign Ministry as saying.

Both died after inhaling the mysterious gas pumped into the theatre by Russian special forces before their assault to incapacitate Chechen rebels holding more than 800 hostages there, doctors involved in treating the survivors said.

The unnamed doctors were quoted in a report on Russia's privately-owned NTV television.

A Belarussian woman, 55-year-old Lyudmila Bogacheva, also died, RIA news agency said.

And an Austrian woman hostage died in hospital, Austrian diplomats were reported as saying.

A total of 75 foreigners had been among more than 800 people taken hostage in the theatre last Wednesday by heavily-armed Chechen rebels demanding an end to Russia's war in their breakaway southern Russian republic.

Witnesses said many of the hostages were overcome by an incapacitating gas that the special forces pumped into the theatre immediately before their pre-dawn assault on the building on Saturday.

The number of dead has edged up to 118 people and the final toll is still not known.

Hundreds of people remain in hospital struggling to recover from the after-effects of the gas.