HIGHLIGHTS: 7 Hostages Released Early Friday||First Pictures of the Attackers Aired By Russian TV Friday||Putin Claims Operation Planned Abroad||A Woman Trying to Escape Has been Killed While 2 Other Women Make it to Safety||Two Jordanian Doctors Allowed in||Contact with Attackers Described as Erratic at Best|| STORY: Hundreds of hostages, including many children, endured a second night of captivity Friday after a Chechen "suicide squad" laid siege to a packed Moscow theater, killing one woman who tried to escape.

The brazen Chechen attack in the Russian capital, carried out by up to 40 heavily armed men and women seeking a Russian troop withdrawal from their homeland, drew condemnation from world leaders and dealt a humiliating blow to the Kremlin.

Earlier Friday, seven hostages were released, according to a spokesman for Russia's FSB domestic security service.

Two women managed to escape Thursday by clambering through a window during the tense stand-off, marked by sporadic negotiations between Russian officials and the Chechens.

As police tried to help them scramble away from the building, the Chechens fired a grenade launcher at them, wounding one of the women.

NTV television on Friday broadcast the first pictures of the attackers, showing three men in camouflage uniforms and a woman, her face obscured by a black headscarf bearing an inscription in Arabic.

NTV's correspondent Sergei Dedukh said the hostages had been divided into two groups, one on the ground floor, the other on the theater's balcony.

Arab satellite television station al-Jazeera showed a tape of what it said was one of the black-clad male attackers saying: "Each of us is ready to sacrifice for God and the independence of Chechnya. We seek death more than you seek life."

PUTIN SCRAPS TRAVEL PLANS

President Vladimir Putin, wrestling with his biggest challenge in two and a half years in power, scrapped plans to meet President Bush at the weekend in Mexico and canceled trips to Germany and Portugal to deal with the drama.

Looking grim-faced and drained, he told the nation the rebel operation was a "terrorist act planned abroad," but he said the top priority was to save the lives of the hostages.

World leaders rallied behind the beleaguered Kremlin leader and called for united action against acts of terror.

FSB security service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko said the attackers shot a woman dead as she tried to escape when they seized the theater some four kilometers (three miles) southeast of the Kremlin on Wednesday night.

FSB officials said 75 foreigners, including Australians, Austrians, Britons, Germans and three Americans, were among the roughly 700 men, women and children being held in conditions that grew grimmer by the hour. There were diabetics among those held and some people with heart conditions, officials said.

One of two Jordanian doctors who had been allowed inside the theater said the attackers were dealing with people "normally," but that food was becoming a necessity.

"There are very many children, they need medicine," he said.

Contacts with the hostage-takers appeared erratic at best.

ATTACKKERS CALL FOR END TO CHECHEN WAR

The Chechen news web site www.kavkaz.org reported what it said was a statement by the leader of the attackers. "There's more than a thousand people here. No one will get out of here alive and they'll die with us if there's any attempt to storm the building," the web site quoted him saying.

He called on Putin to stop the war and pull his troops out of Chechnya if he wanted to save the hostages' lives.

The hostage-taking is the most audacious Chechen attack since the first Chechen war of 1994 to 1996. Russia has fought on and off since 1994 to quell the revolt in Chechnya, which costs lives daily among troops and civilians.

PHOTO CAPTION

Medical personnel pull the body of a dead female hostage out of a Moscow theater October 24, 2002. Sergei Ignatchenko, a spokesman for the FSB security service told reporters the victim, yet to be identified, was about 20 years old and had a gunshot wound to the chest. He did not confirm whether the attackers had shot her. (Grigory Dukor/Reuters)