Mutinous Prisoners Given Food, Water : Riot: Medicine for two of eight guards being held hostage is also delivered. Officials discount inmates’ threatening message. 500 Guardsmen are deployed.

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — As a siege that has claimed at least seven prisoners’ lives dragged on through a fourth day at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, hundreds of mutinous inmates received their first delivery of food and water, along with medicine for two of the eight guards they hold as hostages.

Peanut butter, bread, fruit, cheese and sandwich meat “for 458 people” and a barrel of water were dropped off in the prison yard late Wednesday afternoon, said Sharron Kornegay, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. A group from the barricaded building, L Block, was allowed to come out and take it.

Piped water continued to be shut off, as was electricity. The last meal the inmates were fed was at midday on Easter Sunday, hours before the uprising began. The only food available since would have been snacks from the prison store they may have hoarded in their footlockers.

Despite a threatening message unveiled on a sheet draped from a window Wednesday morning--which warned authorities that a hostage would be killed if prisoners’ demands were not met within 3 1/2 hours--”all of the hostages are alive, we’re fairly certain,” said Jim Mayers, a corrections department spokesman in Columbus, the state capital.

Negotiators have spoken to some, but not all, of the hostages, Mayers added.

Late Wednesday, the negotiators spoke for 90 minutes with inmates in the longest continuous discussion they’ve had. Officials were characterized by a spokesman as “very pleased with the progress.”

Meanwhile, 500 National Guard troops from 15 units were deployed to the prison as “a precautionary measure,” said Mike Dawson, a spokesman for Gov. George V. Voinovich.

“The mission is not defined,” said National Guard Capt. Jim Boling. The troops include engineering brigades, military police and medical corps.

Kornegay cautioned that the inmates had not agreed to any hostage releases or other actions in exchange for the deliveries. “This was a good-faith gesture on our part,” she said.

The medication was prescription drugs for pre-existing conditions, Kornegay added. “We trust that it will be delivered,” she said.

The day was ending on a much more hopeful note than it had begun. The sheet draped from an L Block window clearly angered and frustrated authorities, who have been trying to keep negotiations as secretive as possible.

“It’s not new,” said Tessa Unwin, the corrections department spokeswoman on morning duty at Lucasville. “They’ve been threatening things like this from the beginning.”

The standoff began about 3 p.m. on Sunday, when a fight that corrections officials say may have been staged broke out in the recreation yard. When guards rushed over to intervene, the incident escalated into a full-scale riot. Nineteen prisoners and corrections officers were injured.

The bodies of seven prisoners had been found on Monday and Tuesday. The first six were severely beaten with batons and officials are keeping secret the details of the seventh death, which was in a cell in K Block, a building connected by a corridor to L Block.

Authorities continued to refuse to divulge 18 of the 19 inmate demands, with Unwin characterizing them as “self-serving and petty, as they always are in these situations.”

Officials have rejected the one confirmed request: to talk with the media. They have asked the prisoners for a good-faith release of one hostage before they will allow any statements.

The prisoners have tried to circumvent authorities by hanging sheets with messages against the sand-colored walls of L Block, and by rigging up a homemade loudspeaker.

Earlier Wednesday, shortly after 3 a.m., a state police helicopter circling the prison compound suffered a mechanical failure and crashed nearby, injuring the pilot and his passenger, the state prison system’s regional security administrator. A state trooper running to assist also was hurt when he fell, breaking his leg.