Ex-teacher takes pupils hostage in France

An unemployed teacher took 18 students, a teacher and another man hostage at gunpoint at high school.

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.

HT Image

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 said.