One minute, Californian Natalya Aleshnya was enjoying the music at a Moscow theater – the next, she was clutched in the grip of terror as Chechen rebels stormed in, toting machine guns, grenades and explosives.
“I feel lucky that I’m alive,” Aleshnya told The Post of her frightening ordeal, which began Oct. 24.
In a telephone interview from her home in Sunnyvale, 35 miles south of San Francisco, Aleshnya told how her heart pounded with fear as she sat in the balcony.
“We do not want your deaths,” one of the masked terrorists screamed to the 840 theatergoers enjoying a second-act scene involving Arctic explorers in the beloved Russian musical “Nord-Ost.”
“We want only for Russia to allow Chechnya to be independent.”
The bloody siege ended about 55 harrowing hours later, when Russian commandos pumped the theater full of a powerful gas that subdued the terrorists – but killed more than 100 innocent captives.
Aleshnya, a 64-year-old retired piano teacher who was in her native Russia visiting her two sons and two grandchildren, was among those saved from likely slaughter.
But 129 hostages lost their lives to gas poisoning in the dramatic dawn raid. Among the dead was the only other American in the theater, Oklahoman Sandy Booker.
“Everybody was praying the soldiers wouldn’t storm the theater. We thought the theater would fall and we would all die,” Aleshnya said.
Throughout the nightmare ordeal, Aleshnya said she concealed her American identity for fear of being targeted.
And she said she’ll forever be haunted by the images of the bloodthirsty terrorists with explosives strapped to their stomachs.
“It was very scary,” said Aleshnya, who emigrated from Russia six years ago. “These people were crazy.”
Aleshnya said she was fast asleep when the gas seeped in – and was roused for a brief second by the gunfire and bombs, only to fall back into unconsciousness.
The next time she opened her eyes was in the hospital, where she spent 10 days after being sickened by the gas, which blistered her face.
“I was so relieved to be alive,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.
“But I feel so bad for all those [innocent] people who died.”