Crowds of mourner held a memorial ceremony outside the Moscow theater seized by Chechen rebels four years ago this week.

Forty-one rebels and 130 victims were killed in the three-day siege, by far most on the last day when security forces pumped gas into the building to knock out the attackers, then stormed the theater. The vast majority of victims succumbed to the gas.

Mourners on Thursday laid flowers on the square outside the theater, where portraits of the dead were on display, released 130 white balloons into the air, The Associated Press reported.

A large portrait of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who had entered the theater during the siege and negotiated with the hostage takers, was taped to the theater wall. Politkovskaya, who had written extensively on the hostage crisis and the subsequent investigation and was a hero to hostages and their relatives, was killed in a contract-style killing on Oct. 7.

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