Police overpower hostage taker at Barcelona school

Spanish police overpowered an armed teenager who had taken 20 children hostage at knifepoint at a school near Barcelona yesterday.

The hostage taker, a former pupil, took control of the class – believed to have included his sister – and held the children for nearly four hours, demanding a ransom of €1m (£640,000). The siege ended when a plainclothes policeman posing as a pizza deliveryman disarmed the teenager as he opened the door of the classroom.

The Catalan Interior Ministry in Barcelona said that a group of 16 hostages was released about two hours into the ordeal. Four remained until the end. None of the students was hurt in the siege at the Casal de l'Angel school in Hospitalet de Llobregat just south of Barcelona.

All of the children were 11 or 12 years old.

While the youth held the last four, police asked if he was hungry and he asked for pizza, the Interior Ministry said. A plainclothes policeman came back with a pizza and overpowered the youth.

Two hours into the hostage crisis, the assailant released 16 captives in two groups. It was not known if the boy's sister was among the 16 hostages initially freed. He was taken into custody about 45 minutes later.

Spain's Interior Minister, Angel Acebes, speaking in the central city of Guadalajara, confirmed the teenage knifeman's arrest and said the hostage taker was a former pupil of the school.

The man, wearing a mask and armed with a knife, burst into a classroom at the school yesterday afternoon and apparently demanded money to free the children.

David Perez, a member of the town council, told the national news agency Efe that the hostage taker had given assurances that he did not intend to harm the children. One pupil described how teachers rushed his class and others out of the building, through the cafeteria and into the playground.

"They told us some man had slipped into the school," he told Spanish national radio. "I was scared." A teacher who identified herself only as Nuria said the hostage taker rang the doorbell at the school as if he was a parent coming to collect his children and was let in.

Roger Persivas, the Spanish government's senior representative in Barcelona, told CNN+ television that the hostage taker appeared to know the building well.

Ambulances had earlier rushed to the scene. They helped distraught parents and children gathered outside. Spanish television broadcast pictures of a crowd of hundreds of parents and bystanders behind police lines.

The freed children were last night still reportedly inside the school, being treated by a team of psychologists.

As a car left the school, apparently taking the hostage taker into custody, a crowd swarmed around it, with many people screaming insults.