Moscow — Gathered in a circle with other hostages at Moscow's Theatre Na Dubrovka, staring at a 50-kilogram bomb, Vassilen Nedkov was sure they were all going to die.

With the hundreds of hostages, the 28-year-old resident of Canada had spent three days wondering whether they would ever make it out of the theatre alive. Early Saturday morning, it seemed the answer was no.

In a second circle around the hostages and the bomb were 18 women clad in black — widows of Chechen fighters killed in the war in that breakaway Russian republic — standing with explosives strapped to their waists. If the blast from the main bomb didn't kill them, surely the smaller blasts from behind would do the job.

The rest of the hostage-takers, the Chechen men, took up positions around the theatre, anticipating a raid by Russian soldiers that seemed more and more likely. Each held an automatic weapon in one hand and either a grenade or a detonator in the other.

"That's when we realized for sure that they were planning to kill us," Mr. Nedkov said Sunday in a telephone interview from his bed in a Moscow hospital, little more than a day after Russian special-forces troops stormed the theatre, freeing the hostages but killing more than 160 people in the process. "They were about 1.5 seconds from blowing the whole place up. All they had to do was push the button."

Then the militants' plans began to unravel. A young boy among the hostages threw a bottle at one of the militants, a move that snapped nerves in a tense atmosphere. Some of the male hostage-takers opened fire, killing two of their captives.

Guerrilla leader Movsar Barayev realized immediately that the shootings would give the Russians a reason to attack and perhaps turn international opinion even further against his unit's attempts to draw attention to the fighting in their homeland.

"He started yelling at his men, 'You didn't have to do that, you didn't have to kill anyone,'" Mr. Nedkov recalled.

Mr. Barayev began trying to control the damage. He called the International Red Cross to explain that the shooting had been an accident and began talking about releasing some of the hostages as a conciliatory gesture.

Meanwhile, according to at least one other hostage account, related in the British newspaper The Guardian, some of the male hostage-takers had moved upstairs to watch security-camera video footage of them storming the stage on the first day of the crisis.

Unknown to the Chechens, an antiterrorist squad was monitoring their every move, most likely with fibre-optic cameras. It was at this point that gas began pouring from the theatre's ventilation system.

Some of the militants staggered to put on masks they had brought for exactly that situation, but most collapsed within seconds. So did almost all the hostages.

Taking advantage of the moment, the antiterrorist squad burst through the roof and through the building's drains into the auditorium.

Through the haze, one of the terrorists who was still standing shouted for the hostages to lie on the floor. Mr. Nedkov grabbed a handkerchief he had with him, dipped it in water and put it over his mouth and nose.

"After that, I don't remember anything until I woke up in hospital," he said Sunday. He said he now feels no aftereffects from the gas and hopes to be discharged within days.

He was one of the lucky ones. Although Russian authorities immediately labelled the operation a success, dozens of hostages and militants died in the raid. (The Canadian embassy in Moscow said Irina Cooper, who has dual British-Canadian citizenship, was also among those recovering.)

Mr. Nedkov said that despite the deaths, he feels the Russian special forces had no other choice.

"It's kind of a miracle what the Russians did," he said. "There were so many bombs [in the theatre] and the terrorists were so well organized that it was really impossible to do it any other way."

Mr. Nedkov, a landed immigrant from Bulgaria who now lives in the Toronto area, said the more than 60 hours he spent as a hostage were harrowing. He had been planning to be in Moscow for just a few days, to see friends and pick up things he left behind when he quit his former job at an exporting firm.

A fan of Russian culture and stage productions in general, he had heard the positive buzz surrounding Nord-Ost the first-ever Russian musical, and was pleased to land a ticket in the middle of the theatre for last Wednesday night's show.

When Mr. Barayev took to the stage in the second act to announce that he and his unit were taking the audience hostage, he did so during a military scene — even as the guerrilla fired shots into the air to get patrons' attention, Mr. Nedkov and others thought it was all part of the production.

They realized Mr. Barayev was serious only when Chechens began shoving staff from other areas of the theatre into the main auditorium at gunpoint. Then they began placing explosives and land mines around the theatre.

"They said, 'We are from Chechnya. There is a war down there, and we are bringing it to Moscow,'" Mr. Nedkov said.

For nearly three days, he and the other hostages subsisted on little but water and soft drinks from the concession stands, and even those supplies ran low. Although the Chechens refused to bring in food from outside, occasionally from the stage they threw into the crowd chocolates that were gathered and reserved for children, Mr. Nedkov said.

At night, the hostages had to sleep in their seats with the lights burning overhead, but the worst part of the ordeal may have been going to the toilet. Three times a day, hostages were taken in groups to the washrooms, where they were confronted with the sight of the bullet-riddled body of a young woman killed early in the ordeal. The rest of the time, hostages were forced to use the orchestra pit as a makeshift latrine.

Despite their repeated threats to blow up the theatre, Mr. Nedkov said the militants were generally "quite friendly." He said he spoke with Mr. Barayev personally 10 or 15 times, acting as a representative of the 71 foreign hostages.

Several times, he thought the foreigners were about to be released. The militants even told the news media as much Friday morning, but each time the Chechens changed their minds, apparently hoping it would focus international attention on their cause. Mr. Nedkov said Mr. Barayev repeatedly made it clear that he had no issue with the foreigners, that their fight was only with Russia itself.

Still, some of the hostage-takers, mainly the women, made their captives uncomfortable. It was the chilling look in their eyes.

"The women were shocking — some were just 22 or 23 years old. Their faces were empty and they were really willing to die. I've never seen anything like this anywhere," Mr. Nedkov said.

Adding insult to injury, Mr. Nedkov told Agence France-Presse that he was questioned in his hospital bed, having been taken for one of the Chechens because of his build.

"I didn't have my papers with me," he told the news agency. It took a visit to his bedside by the Bulgarian ambassador to dissipate the suspicions.

But he said there was a positive side to his ordeal: the way the crisis has made him feel closer to his adopted country. He plans to fly back to Toronto as soon as he's released from hospital and hopes to bring his young wife, Pitja, to Canada as soon as immigration authorities will allow it.

He said he was astounded at how Canadians seemed to care about his fate, and how helpful the Canadian embassy in Moscow had been during and since the ordeal.

"I'm not even a Canadian citizen yet, and everybody was so nice to me. I just want to say how thankful I am," he said.