French News

French Bank Hostage Seige Update

By Tony Winterburn • Published: 07 Aug 2020 • 8:44

Members from the French elite tactical police unit RAID gather outside a bank in the port city of Le Havre. image: Twitter

An armed gunman who took six people hostage in a French bank in Le Havre has surrendered to police.

The situation at BRED bank, on Boulevard de Strasbourg, was very tense and took hours of negotiations before the situation ended peacefully.

The hostage-taker, a 34-year-old with a history of mental illness, emerged slowly from the building wearing a balaclava and with his hands turned palms-up before officers with their weapons raised moved in and handcuffed him.

All the hostages were unharmed, though in shock, said Denis Jacob of the Alternative police trade union. Bomb squad officers acted after the man told officers there were explosives in a bag. He had been armed with a handgun, a national police spokesman said.

The man initially took six people hostage. Five were subsequently released and the sixth taken to safety after the man was arrested, according to Jacob. The hostage-taker was believed to have Islamist sympathies, two police union officials said, but there was no official confirmation of this.

Militant attacks have shaken France in recent years, with four police officers killed in an October 2019 knife rampage in Paris and 130 people killed by coordinated bombings and shootings in the capital in November 2015.

This is an update of; Armed Man in Hostage Siege Threatens to Blow Up Customers and Bank in Harve France