MOSCOW, October 28 (IslamOnline & New Agencies) - Russia began a day of mourning Monday, October 28, for the victims of last week's hostage drama in a Moscow theater in which 117 people died, amidst mounting criticism of Russia's "callous" use of a mystery gas which experts believe may have been a chemical weapon developed during the Cold War.

One hundred and fifteen people died during the special forces operation to rescue more than 800 people taken hostage by a group of Chechen fighters, who seized a Moscow theater Wednesday, October 23, during a performance of a hit musical.

One woman died on the night of the hostage taking, and another man was killed in the minutes immediately preceding the rescue operation.

However, all the other 115 died from the effects of an incapacitating gas the Russians pumped into the theater to stun the hostage-takers, and medical officials have warned that the toll could rise considerably, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

One hundred and forty-five people are still in intensive care in hospitals around the city, 45 of them in serious condition, suffering from the after-effects of the gas, AFP added.

Russian officials have refused to provide details of the gas, which experts believe may have been a chemical weapon of a non-lethal nature developed during the Cold War, the French news agency added.

A Russian expert on Moscow Echo radio said that the dosage of the gas used in the rescue operation had not taken into account the weakened condition of most of the hostages, and the fact that many of them would have been middle-aged, elderly or in uncertain health.

In his brief address, Russian President Vladimir Putin set the hostage taking and its bloody outcome firmly in the context of the campaign against international terrorism, displaying no inclination to question the current Russian policy on independence-seeking Chechnya.

Local officials said the families of those who died will each receive the equivalent of 3,200 dollars (euros) in compensation, and those who survived will receive have half that amount.

However, there was anger among the relatives and friends of the hostages at the refusal by the authorities to grant them access to their loved ones or, in many cases, even to let them know whether they were alive or dead.

Many were angered too by the lack of precise information about the gas from which the patients were suffering, which doctors said was impeding them in their work.

The refusal to specify the nature of the gas used in the rescue operation has been attributed to traditional Russian obsessions over secrecy, but also to security concerns, with some expressing fears that a nerve gas may have been employed in breach of international conventions.

For some observers, the Russian government's handling of the crisis was callous, and the business daily, Kommersant, headlined, referring to the security services: "The FSB experimented on the hostages."

Russian Federation Council (senate) speaker Sergei Mironov was due later to hold a press conference, accompanied by toxicology and anesthesia experts, to give further details on the gas.

An AFP employee who was among those taken hostage said Sunday that none of the bodies of the dead or injured bore bullet wounds.

"They are not telling us anything about the nature of the gas," Oleg Zyogonov said by telephone from his hospital, adding: "I saw no bullet impact on the bodies."

He said hospital staff had forbidden him to talk to anybody and were monitoring his telephone conversation with the AFP office in Moscow.

Doctors who entered the theater after the raid told local media that several hostages had died choking on their own vomit.

Meanwhile, the British press said Monday Russia should open an independent inquiry into the climax of the Moscow hostage drama and end the Soviet habit of secrecy to reveal what kind of gas was used, resulting in the death of nearly all the 117 victims.

The refusal of the Russian authorities to reveal what kind of gas was used, although this knowledge could be used to help the injured, was "a disgrace, a throwback to the worst of Soviet military secrecy and a callous disregard for human life," wrote The Times.

The left-wing Guardian also said that "there is only one way to clear this up and that is to do something that Russia has historically been ill-inclined to do: hold an independent public inquiry."

It went on: "If it turns out that hostages died who could have been saved had the government told medical staff at the hospital what the nature of the gas was, then the political consequences could be very dire indeed for the president," Vladimir Putin.

"It is as if he has learned nothing at all from the disastrously cold and pusillanimous way he handled the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000, when relatives of the dead were deliberately left uninformed about what had really happened to their loved ones," the Guardian added.

The center-left Independent said: "With the same secrecy and paranoia they displayed at the time of the underwater accident on the Kursk nuclear submarine, the Russians have refused to identify the gas used in the raid on the Moscow theater."

Newspapers also analyzed how Moscow should now handle the war in independence-seeking Republic of Chechnya, an end to which the hostage-takers had been demanding.

Russia's continued hardline policy on Chechnya would only have negative consequences. "Already most of Chechnya has been radicalized by clumsy Russian military repression," said The Times.

It went on: "Unless Mr Putin can open a back-channel to moderates to discuss the political future for Chechnya, there will be more hostage-taking, more suicide bombers and more suffering for ordinary Russians" as there is for ordinary Chechens.

The right-wing Daily Telegraph commented: "It is hard to see how [Putin] can be any more aggressive, short of gassing the entire Chechen population.