Gunmen take hostages in Russian resort

quot;There is no need to stir tension,quot; Itar-Tass news agency quoted Nikolai Karpov as saying. quot;There is no Chechen connection in the case. The captors have been identified.quot;

Russian police and other security workers had surrounded a small hotel under construction in Lazarevskoye and Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo hinted that some kind of operation to free the hostages was being planned.

quot;In the coming hours, we will take the necessary measures to free the captives,quot; Rushailo was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying during a visit to Chechnya.

In televised comments, Kazantsev said one of the hostage-takers had recently been freed from a mental hospital and another was a 23-year-old drug addict.

Russian news agencies initially reported four gunmen being involved in the hostage-taking in Lazarevskoye, some 50 km from Sochi.

Tass later quoted Russia8217;s chief spokesman for Chechnya Sergei Yastrzhembsky as saying there were three hostage-takers. NTV commercial television quoted police at the scene as saying there were only two.

Tass also quoted Sochi police as saying that the captors had later demanded a helicopter.

But officials could not immediately confirm the information. It remained unclear whether the hostage-takers had dropped initial demands for a ransom and release of Chechen prisoners.

President Vladimir Putin had been informed about the incident and ordered the FSB domestic security service to coordinate the release of the hostages, Yastrzhembsky said. The number of captives was also unclear.

Russian news agencies initially said there were seven hostages, while Yastrzhembsky told Interfax there were five at the most and Kazantsev said there were five men and a woman. He also said one person had escaped.

Interfax reported that a woman hostage was shot and wounded as she fled. Another man had jumped from the first floor and was in shock, it added.

NTV television said a videotape, thrown out by the captors, showed four people handcuffed to radiators and a jerry-can, which was said to contain petrol, was placed next to them.

Yastrzhembsky said the hostage-takers were armed with a pistol and hand grenades. Police in nearby Krasnodar told Tass they had only a pistol.

Tass quoted the head of Krasnodar8217;s police press office, Vladimir Vologin, as saying elite police units had secured control of the ground floor of the building after a shootout. He said talks with the hostage-takers were underway.

Yastrzhembsky said the captors had been supplied with a video camera and unspecified communication means to maintain dialogue. But no progress had been reported.

Russian news agencies said an elder brother of one of the captors was due to take part in talks.

Russian troops launched a wide-scale military campaign in the breakaway province of Chechnya last year. The West and Russian human rights campaigners say the war has been marked by human rights violations, including illegal imprisonment.

The Russian government denies this and accuses rebel leaders of staging a series of terrorist attacks in the past year, including apartment block blasts in which nearly 300 people died. The rebels say they did not plant the bombs.