Two armed, masked men burst into a town hall north of Paris, taking 13 municipal councillors hostage and demanding tickets for Wednesday’s Champions League football final, officials said on Tuesday.
”As grotesque as it may seem, it appears that these people came with the intention of getting hold of places for the Champions League,” the police department said.
The attackers broke into the premises at around 10pm on Monday, ordering the councillors under a table at gunpoint.
”They said: ‘We want to see the mayor, we want the tickets’,” according to Gilles Smadja, chief aide to the mayor of the Paris suburb of Saint Denis.
Le Parisien newspaper said the assailants mistook a councillor for the mayor, put a gun to his head and threatened to shoot him in the foot before realising their mistake and fleeing the building.
No one was injured in the incident, which was over in less than 10 minutes, although the officials were said to be in a state of shock.
Police, alerted by mobile phone, arrived at the scene shortly afterwards and set up a security cordon. But they found no trace of the attackers.
Saint Denis is home to the giant Stade de France, where Spain’s Barcelona and England’s Arsenal will contest European football’s top club prize. Tickets for the match are selling for â,¬500 to â,¬2 000 on the black market.
During major matches at the Stade de France, a batch of tickets is generally allocated to the town authorities in Saint Denis.
But mayor Didier Paillard, who was in a separate office at the time of the assault, said it was ”ridiculous to imagine that we have tickets here” in the town hall. — AFP
