An unemployed teacher took 18 students, a teacher and another man hostage at gunpoint at a high school in western France on Thursday, officials said.
At the time of going to press the drama was unfolding in a state high school in the town of Sable-sur-Sarthe, southwest of Le Mans.
Officials said the hostage-taker, a 33-year-old man usually employed on short-term teaching contracts, but presently 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 Agence France-Presse. — Sapa-AFP