MOSCOW - Russian special forces stormed the theater where about 40 heavily armed Chechen guerrillas held hundreds of hostages early this morning, in a furious exchange of gunfire that reverberated through a southeast Moscow neighborhood.

The firefight, conducted out of sight of the press gathered near the scene, lasted only about 15 minutes. Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasiliyev said most of the hostages had been freed, although he confirmed there were casualties.

Thirty-two of the guerillas were killed, he said, including the ringleader, although some of them escaped through the sewer system, authorities said. Several of the hostage-takers were arrested.

Vasilyev said several of the female guerrillas tried to take off their masks and blend with the hostages.

After the fighting, a long line of ambulances started leaving the scene, their blue lights flashing in the gray sleet and snow. City buses carried off small groups of hostages who had not been injured, many of them slumped in their seats behind windows frosted with steam.

At a school a few blocks from the theater, relatives gathered in the gym, singing Orthodox hymns as they waited for word of the fate of their loved ones.

One was 46-year-old Nina Osipova, whose daughter, Olga, 18, was among the more than 600 theater patrons seized Monday by the guerrillas. "It seems to me I can't think of anything," she said, wearing a gray wool coat in the sleet.

The guerrillas had threatened to start shooting their captives at dawn if Russia did not halt military operations in Chechnya.

The threat came after a night of tension and violence. The Chechens, some with explosives strapped to their bodies, had grown edgy inside the crowded and increasingly dirty theater, hostages had said.

"Something bad is in the air," said one hostage, journalist Anna Andrianova, in a cell phone interview quoted in the RIA news agency last night. "People are in a state of alarm. ... The terrorists seem to be getting tired of all this."

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, who has contended the hostage-taking was a terrorist act planned outside Russia, called the situation "very grave" a few hours before troops moved in.

"I will tell you straightforwardly that we are dealing with an extremely difficult and absolutely clear situation - the hostage taking - in the building on Melinkov Street," he told leaders of Russia's parliamentary political parties.

He said it was "most correct" to focus on "one task - the preservation of lives of people, who remain in the theater building."

Around 9 p.m. last night, a Russian negotiating team led by former Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov emerged from talks with harsh news. The rebels said they would start shooting hostages unless their demand for an end to the conflict was met.

Friday began with a trickle of hostages emerging from the theater. Seven adults left in the early morning, and eight children - aged 6 to 12 - tumbled out of the theater, which had reportedly been wired with explosives, in the early afternoon. One girl clutched a teddy bear with aviator glasses.

But guerrillas failed to make good on a pledge to a Russian legislator to free all 75 or so of the foreign hostages, including three Americans, who have not been identified.

Negotiators also sought, without success, to secure the release of 20 remaining children, aged 14 and under - including one girl with epilepsy.

U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow emerged from talks with the guerrillas at lunchtime sounding pessimistic. "We're very concerned that no other hostages have been freed and that the terrorists are not prepared to discuss the release of other hostages," he said.

The Islamic rebels said in a tape broadcast on Qatar's Al-Jazeera network that they are prepared to die. "I swear by God we are more keen on dying than you are keen on living," a man in black said. "Each one of us is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of God and the independence of Chechnya."

One woman hostage was shot and killed while trying to slip away late Wednesday or Thursday morning. Police were still trying to identify her yesterday. Guerillas also fired grenade launchers at two others as they jumped out a window. One was injured.

Kremlin officials seemed increasingly uncomfortable with loud calls by some Russians to stop the fighting in Chechnya, a Russian republic the size of Wales devastated in the past decade by two wars with Russia and constant, bitter feuding among criminal gangs and warlords.

Vasiliyev said yesterday that unauthorized protests in support of the guerrillas' demands would be halted. "You may regard this as a warning to the hotheads who intend to stir up passions," he told the Interfax news agency. "If anything of this kind happens, we will act toughly."

Friends and families of the hostages staged a small, illegal demonstration near the Kremlin, just east of Red Square, and police hauled at least two of them away. Tatyana Perekatova, whose sister is a hostage, told the news radio station Echo Moskvyy she was released but her boyfriend was still being held.

The protesters included cast members of Nord-Ost, German for "northeast," Russia's first musical. The Soviet-era story of polar adventure was playing at the Melinkov Theater - the former Palace of Culture for Moscow's ball-bearing factory - when guerrillas stormed it Wednesday night shortly after the start of the second act.

The Russian Press Ministry warned the media yesterday that it was "inadmissible to spread information that might justify terrorism or extremism," including statements by the guerillas, the state-controlled ITAR-TASS reported.

Violators risk losing their broadcast or print licenses. The license of one small Moscow-area cable station was reportedly suspended as a result.

NTV television did not broadcast the audio of its interview with the leader of the hostage-takers early yesterday morning, using only the images. The tape showed three Chechen men in camouflage carrying Kalashnikov rifles and sitting casually in a kitchen.

Two wore black masks. NTV identified the third, who left his face exposed, as the guerrilla's leader - Movsar Barayev, a nephew of rebel warlord Arbi Barayev, who reportedly died last year.

The Sky News television network acquired the footage, with sound. In it, Barayev calls his guerrilla group "Vowed to Death in Islam," and calmly tells his Russian interviewer : "We're ready for anything." He expresses skepticism of claims that Russia couldn't pull its troops out of Chechnya fast enough to satisfy his demands.

Two females guerrillas wore robes and veils, leaving only their eyes exposed. The hostage-takers have said some of the women are the widows of rebels killed by Russian forces. Each woman held a pistol in one hand. In the other, each held what appeared to be a detonator wired to what could be explosives taped to the woman's waist.

Six female hostages were also paraded before the camera, appearing tense but healthy. Some of the women say that they sent a letter to Putin asking him to end the war voluntarily, contrary to reports on Russian radio.

Another woman notes that reporters who call the hostages always ask if they want food or water. "We would like to get out of here alive," she says.

The standoff presented an acute political dilemma for Putin, who was first elected with promises of a quick victory against Chechen insurgents.

If he had made concessions to the guerillas, he would have been seen as knuckling under to terrorism and retreating from his pledge to impose a "dictatorship of law" in Russia. In ordering troops to storm the theater, he risked triggering a bloodbath.

The Kremlin had given some ground yesterday. Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, said the guerillas' lives would be guaranteed if they freed the hostages.

"We are conducting talks and will conduct talks, hoping that they will bring positive results in freeing the hostages," Patrushev had said. There was no immediate response from the guerrillas.

Meanwhile, Russian troops in Chechnya continued what are called "special operations" against Chechen rebels Friday. Four separatists were killed in a fire fight east of the village of Mesker-Yurt, a military spokesman said.

Many Muscovites stayed close to a television screen yesterday, following every twist in the hostage drama.

People have grown edgy about public places. Some parents kept their children home from school. Security at airports, train terminals and bus stations has been tightened. Police are conducting more frequent document checks of Russians, who in practice must always carry their internal passports.

Elite Moscow has been spooked by the storming of the theater, where many of the hostages are well-educated professionals and their families. A fund-raiser to save the Siberian tiger was canceled, as was an annual television journalism award ceremony.

Feelings are running high against Chechens, who as dark-skinned Caucasians are already subject to discrimination and harassment in Moscow. One man started shouting anti-Chechen slogans at passers-by in the Kitai Gorod metro station Thursday, Izvestia reported. "Friends, it's time to kill the Chechens!" he said. "Otherwise, they will shoot us all."

The Moscow Prosecutor's Office announced that a 27-year-old Chechen man had been arrested in connection with last week's lunchtime car bombing of a crowded McDonald's restaurant here, which killed one person and injured five others.

Previously, police had said the bombing was the result of a business dispute. But First Deputy Prosecutor Yuri Sinelshchikov told the Interfax news agency terrorism hadn't been ruled out. "At the moment, the main theories under investigation are a criminal war or a terrorist attack," he said.

At a roadblock set up by police guarding the perimeter of the scene, about 100 friends and relatives of the hostages gathered near the theater carrying hand-made signs and banners, including "Free the Women and Children," "Fulfill All Demands and Save 700 People," and simply, "Spare Them."

The boxy, Soviet-era theater was just visible about a quarter-of-a-mile away. Every few minutes, the line of police would part to let a string of ambulances pass, or an official-looking Mercedes sedan with blue lights suction-cupped to the roof.

Members of the cast who escaped Wednesday night after the guerrillas stormed the theater participated in the brief protest, carrying a blue Nord-Ost flag that bears the signature of cast members and has been taken to the North Pole.

Near the shelter for hostage relatives, the cast sang one of the upbeat songs from the patriotic show, based on a socialist realist novel, The Two Captains.

Among the singers was Pyotr Markin, 27, who plays a math teacher who becomes the hero's best friend. The tall, lanky actor was waiting backstage Wednesday at about 9:05 p.m. when he heard gunshots on stage, and saw the guerillas on a monitor.

"There was panic in the hall," Markin recalled. He and a group of other cast members fled to a costume storage room, where they locked the door, tied some of the costumes together and climbed down from a high window. In all, 10 of the show's adult actors and 13 child actors escaped.