Half a dozen children and their teacher were released safely yesterday after being held hostage for four hours by a teenager, armed with two swords at a nursery in the eastern French city of Be-san-con.
Officials said the man, whom one person described as suffering from a personality disorder, had been arrested and was being questioned by police from France’s elite GIGN force.
“There is no more violence, it all went calmly,” Besancon Mayor Jean-Louis Fous-se-ret told iTele television. “This is a person who is in a very bad mental state,” he added of the hostage-taker, who he said lived locally.
The children, aged four to six, were wrapped in green wool blankets and carried away by relatives who had waited anxiously outside as police negotiated with the hostage-taker by telephone.
Officials said the young man turned up at the Charles Fourier nursery shortly before 9 a.m. brandishing two swords and mumbling that he “wanted something.”
He initially took around 20 children hostage, later releasing around 14 of them, and finally letting the last half dozen go just before 1 p.m.
His motive was still unclear, although Jean-Marc Magda, administrative head of Fous-se-ret’s office, told Reuters he was known to suffer from depression and psychological problems.
