Tuesday April 12, 2005 5:46 PM
ENNEPETAL, Germany (
AP) - A man armed with two knives pulled four girls off a public bus in northwest Germany on Tuesday and held them hostage in a cellar for six hours before setting them free, authorities said.
The man pulled the four girls off a public bus and forced them into a nearby home, where he held them hostage in a standoff with police. There was no immediate word on the girls' conditions, police spokesman Joerg Blaszyk said.
It was not clear whether the man had been arrested.
Police sharpshooters and other officers quickly surrounded the home shortly after the man barricaded himself inside, and other officers established contact with the man by telephone, Blaszyk said.
The mother of one of the children who escaped from the bus said the man told them he wanted to bring his family to Germany from Iran.
The man took the four girls captive after commandeering the bus, which was filled with schoolchildren on their way home in the town of Ennepetal, said Ulrich Rungwerth of the North Rhine-Westphalia state Interior Ministry.
Renate Schulte said her 16-year-old son, Marvin, who escaped after the man forced the bus driver to stop, told her that the man read a statement in the bus saying his children were in Iran and he wanted to be allowed to bring them to Germany.
The man then herded some of the children into the back of the bus and tied nine or 10 of them together by their belt buckles with a cord.
The man told the children on the bus to stay calm and said he wanted to talk to the German government, Marvin Schulte said.
``He didn't seem aggressive,'' the boy said. ``He said we should stay quiet and he didn't want to harm us.''
The man, described by witnesses as in his 40s, forced the bus driver to stop and hustled the group of captives off the bus, but apparently let several of them go.
He forced the others toward a house where a woman was returning home and forced her to give him the front-door key, Marvin Schulte said.
The man pushed the woman aside, shoved the children into the house and locked the door. Neighbors said the man lived in the area.
The hostage-taking rattled the small-town calm in an area of single-family homes in Ennepetal, between the cities of Duesseldorf and Dortmund.
