BBC NEWS
Ex-teacher seizes French students
A former teacher has taken 18 students, a teacher and a teaching assistant hostage at a school in France.
The man, who is armed with a handgun, is holding the hostages at a school in Sable-sur-Sarthe, south-west of Paris.
The 33-year-old man has been out of work since losing his job as a supply teacher at the school two years ago.
Police have surrounded the building and officers are negotiating with the man who has barricaded himself and the hostages in a classroom.
The man has made no demands but a police official said the hostage-taker "wants to talk to the press about his employment problems".
An employee at the Colbert de Torcy secondary school told LCI television: "He was very depressed when he left the school two years ago.
"We knew him, that's why we allowed him into the school."
French special forces are reported to be en route from Paris to the scene.
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Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/4790468.stm
Published: 2006/03/09 16:21:26 GMT
© BBC MMVI
was his gov't stipend of escargo was discontinued?
Armed teacher takes 20 hostage in French school
09/03/2006 16h21LE MANS, France (AFP) - An unemployed teacher took 18 students, a teacher and another man hostage at gunpoint at a high school in western France.
The drama was unfolding in the Colbert de Torcy state school in the town of Sable-sur-Sarthe, southwest of Le Mans.
Officials said the hostage-taker, a 33-year-old contract supply teacher without work, had taught at the school two years ago.
They said he was armed with a pistol.
"Police are currently at the scene and are negotiating with the hostage-taker through a door which has been barricaded," the director of the regional government administrator's office told AFP.
He was "probably going through a crisis of depression," the director said.
The school, which has around 1,600 students enrolled, also contains a vocational training section.
The fruits of socialism. Average double-digit unemployment.
Send in the gigolo!
Why aren't they giving the guy's name?
BBC articles need not be excerpted.
I got question two question
One is this guy Muslum
Other one is has French surrender YET????
SABLE-SUR-SARTHE, France (AFP) - An unemployed teacher who took 20 students and two adults hostage in a high school in western France surrendered and released his captives unharmed, officials said.
The news brought to an end a drama that lasted several hours in the town of Sable-sur-Sarthe, southwest of Le Mans, during which time elite police teams and negotiators were deployed.
The top government official for the region, Stephane Bouillon, told journalists at the scene that a pistol the 33-year-old teacher had used to sequester the hostages turned out to be a fake.
The surrender "happened without any violence. The hostage-taker had respect for the children and the young people he had with him," Bouillon said.
"He just wanted someone to listen to him, to understand his distress," he said, adding that the man had previously received medical and psychological treatments for personal problems.
Demands during the crisis that the teacher speak with the media and a former education minister from the region, and accounts from school workers who knew the teacher suggested he was depressed over not finding work for a prolonged period of time.
The drama began Thursday afternoon, when the man was let into the Colbert de Torcy high school -- where he worked two years ago -- and proceeded to a vocational training classroom where he took the 20 students aged between 16 and 18 years hostage along with two supervisors.
The state school, which has 1,500 students enrolled, was quickly evacuated and police called in.
Bouillon said the man, whom he did not publicly identify, had demanded to meet Francois Fillon, a senator from France's ruling UMP party who was national education minister up to June last year, and who used to be mayor of Sable-sur-Sarthe.
Bouillon's cabinet director, Patrice Hatton, said the teacher had also demanded to speak directly to the media to explain his grievances.
Officials and students outside the school said the hostages had been allowed to use their mobile phones to communicate with their families and friends during their ordeal.
One employee at the school, Bernadette Mercier, said the unemployed teacher was known to be depressed, "apparently because he hasn't found work since leaving the school two years ago."
But, she said, "we never expected this sort of thing from him."
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin congratulated police on the bloodless resolution of the incident, aides told AFP.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who had interrupted a trip to the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to follow the events, also hailed the outcome.