Pupils taken hostage in French school

[KIISQueen]

NANTES, France (Reuters) - An unemployed teacher armed with a gun took 20 pupils and three adults hostage at a school in western France on Thursday, demanding to talk to the media about his job problems, local officials said.

Police surrounded the secondary school in the town of Sable-sur-Sarthe where the 33-year-old man barricaded the pupils aged 17 to 18, a teacher and two other adults into a classroom.

The hostage-taker was a supply teacher who had worked at the Colbert de Torcy school but had been unable to find a job for the past two years, the town authorities said.

Other pupils were evacuated and a telephone hotline was set up for anxious parents in Sable-sur-Sarthe, 220 km (140 miles) southwest of Paris and 100 km east of the city of Nantes.

Special forces trained in negotiations with hostage-takers were on their way to the scene.

"The man wants to talk to the press about his job problems," said Dominique Dezecot, an official at the prefecture, the headquarters of the town authorities.

"We are hopeful (it will end well) but we are worried," Bernadette Mercier, a school employee, told LCI television.

Officials initially put the number of hostages at 18 pupils and two adults, but later raised the number.

"All the day pupils have gone home," Marie, a boarder at the school, told France Info radio shortly after the hostages were seized on Thursday afternoon.

"They took all the boarders out via the toilets by a door where they couldn't see us. We went around the buildings to get to a door behind the gym and now everyone is in the gym. At the moment they are doing a roll call to see who is there and who isn't there."

The drama comes at a sensitive time for conservative Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who is under pressure over an unpopular youth job creation plan.

Aides said Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was monitoring the situation during a visit to the French Antilles Islands but he announced no plans to cut short his trip.

Sarkozy was mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly when a man took children hostage at a local school in May 1993.

Sarkozy helped negotiate with the hostage-taker before crack police broke into a classroom, killed the man and freed the remaining hostages. The other hostages had been gradually released as a result of the negotiations.


http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2631&ncid=2631&e=2&u=/nm/20060309/ts_nm/france_hostages_dc

[kgsilvas]

SABLE-SUR-SARTHE, France - A former teacher armed with a handgun and reportedly suffering from depression held 23 hostages — most students — for several hours Thursday in a high school classroom before surrendering calmly, police said.

The 33-year-old man, who was unemployed and looking for work, turned himself in after hours of negotiations as he held the hostages captive throughout the afternoon and early evening, police and local officials said. Nobody was injured in the standoff.

A crack intervention squad brought in by helicopter handled the critical second phase of negotiations that "ended in freedom for the entire group without violence," Jean-Luc Prigent, a top aide in the local administration told France-Info radio.

The atmosphere in the classroom was calm, with students sending cell phone text messages and calling their families, Stephane Bouillon, top official for the Sarthe region, told The Associated Press.

A school receptionist, Bernadette Mercier, told AP earlier that the man had promised not to harm the students, ages 16 to 18, who were held in an upper-floor study hall.

Mercier said the former teacher had been "very, very depressed" two years ago because of personal problems and now was apparently seeking work. School officials allowed him to enter because they knew him, she said.

"He promised a teacher's assistant that he would do no harm to the students," Mercier said by telephone, adding that he appeared calm.

Police had taken up positions around the school, and elite forces headed there via helicopter from a military airport west of Paris, police said. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, on a visit to Guadeloupe, said he was following the situation closely.

The receptionist, who was not in the same building as the hostages, said the incident began about 2:30 p.m.

"We knew him, so we simply let him in," she said. "He seemed totally normal."

Mercier, who did not identify the gunman, said the school has about 1,500 students.

Prosecutor Jean Elek informed families of students held hostage of the situation, Le Mans court officials said. A crisis center for parents was set up on the school grounds.

Police cordoned off the area in Sable-sur-Sarthe, outside Le Mans. The city famed for its 24-hour annual car race is about 145 miles southwest of Paris, and Sable-sur-Sarthe is about 30 miles from Le Mans. LINK (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060309/ap_on_re_eu/france_hostage_school)