In one, writers said that "the incident was like the fuse on a detonator," with more than 1,000 stories censored or scrapped altogether last year, The South China Morning Post wrote.
The guerrillas, who had apparently planned their strike for months, held the theater for 57 hours before Russian special forces pumped the sedative gas into the complex, then methodically shot unconscious Chechens, some of whom still gripped detonators for more than 30 bombs wired throughout the building.
When the button jammed on that detonator, Republicans tried another, more powerful type of explosive, and this one threatens to be much more successful.
Michels said the syringe could have been converted into an electrical detonator, but it was more likely it was filled with nitroglycerin.
The bomb was built with a more advanced detonator than the one that fizzled during the foiled Christmas Day attack, in which the would-be bomber, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was subdued by other passengers alarmed by plumes of smoke rising from his seat.
(Mobiles are occasionally used as detonators for explosives, and, more commonly, for communications among militants during their operations).
Some dismantling is still done there by hand, but more often now detonator and fuse removal is achieved using remote-controlled saws.
American officials say he ultimately led the police to a weapons cache of almost 300 pounds of explosives and more than 1,400 detonators.
"There's just something really special about it," said Mehlhorn, who like Puepke prefers the finely crafted brass detonators they unscrew or cut off from the British bombs to the more simplified American brass detonators.
DOENITZ: They mean that it was important to us, as a consequence of the discussion with the Fuehrer at his headquarters, to find a good magnetic detonator which would lead to a more rapid sinking of the ships and thereby achieve the results noted in this report in the war diary.
