Officers arrest gunman who doused hostage in petrol
Anti-terrorist officers have arrested an armed man who took three people hostage in Paris and claimed to have a bomb.
French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the stand-off in the capital’s 10th arrondissement had ended with the hostages, which included a pregnant woman, being freed.
One of the hostages was doused in petrol and hit in the face, escaping before police arrived on the scene.
The drama unfolded around 4pm on Tuesday (June 12) when a man, carrying a handgun and explosives, walked into the offices of a start-up company on the Rue des Petites Ecuries and barricaded himself in.
The motive for the attack remains unclear but the incident did not appear to be terrorism-related, the Interior Ministry confirmed.
The hostage-taker reportedly made demands to be put in contact with the Iranian ambassador in Paris, and also asked for police vehicles to be removed from the vicinity.
France has been on high alert after a series of jihadist attacks that has claimed more than 200 lives in the past three years, most recently a Saturday night knife attack in Paris last month in which one person was killed.
In March a police officer who swapped places with a female hostage during an attack by a Daesh supporter on a supermarket in southern France died of his wounds.
Lieutenant Colonel. Arnaud Beltrame, 45, was shot in the neck after offering to take the place of a woman during a gunman’s assault on the Super U supermarket in Trèbes.
