A gunman who took six people hostage in a bank in northern France on Thursday surrendered to elite police after a six-hour operation to free his captives.
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.
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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 representative told Reuters.
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.
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