A school in the small Luxembourg town of Wasserbillig was under siege late last night after a lone gunman took 46 children and three adults hostage in a daycare centre. He later freed 17 of his captives.
The children being held hostage by the man inside the centre were aged between five and nine. The gunman has asked for a 15-seat aircraft to take him to Libya today, Luxembourg's Interior Minister, Mr Michel Walter, said.
"I have given orders to end this affair without the use of violence," Mr Walter told a media conference near the day-care centre yesterday evening, hours after the drama started.
He said that the 39-year-old hostage-taker - believed to be armed with a hand grenade, a pistol and two full cans of fuel - was in telephone contact with his psychiatrist.
The school was quickly surrounded at 3.30 p.m. by armed police and emergency services after the man walked into the school unchallenged and seized the children and teachers in one room.
Police officers took up position around the centre in Wasserbillig, a village on the border with Germany, 20 miles north-east of Luxembourg city.
Some 20 ambulances and police vehicles were parked nearby and psychological counselling was being given to around 50 distraught relatives of the children being held. Mr Walter did not identify the man beyond saying that he was an Algerian national who had lived in Luxembourg for the past 18 years.
Sources at the scene said that the man was separated from his Luxembourg wife and that he lived in Manternach, a relatively poor community about five kilometres (three miles) from the day-care centre. The wife's home, also in Manternach, was under police protection.
A French doctor, who did not wish to be named, said "the individual was looking to get back at the [female] director of the creche".
He added that the man's children had previously gone to the day-care centre but that one of them "had been taken away from him by a court decision four years ago. Apparently, the child had been mistreated. Ever since, the man has wanted to take revenge on the director".
Mr Walter said that three of the children being held in the centre were epileptic or asthmatic and that medicine for them had been delivered to the centre.
The three captive staff members had fed the children and put them to bed last night, he said.
Luxembourg's chief prosecutor, Mr Robert Biever, said the hostage-taker had a history of mental disturbance, but that he had not been in trouble with the police since 1994.
The man had initially taken 40 children hostage, but released 17 children aged under five years old soon afterwards. Police spokesmen described the freed youngsters as "traumatised and very nervous".
An adult who had been in the centre, but who had escaped when the man burst in, provided police with details of the arsenal the man was carrying.
Of the 29 children being held in Wasserbillig, 14 are of Portuguese origin, said a spokesman for Lisbon's embassy in Luxembourg, who travelled to the scene.
The diplomat, Mr Roi Dias Costa, said the hostage-taker had called for the plane to Libya and also 60 million Belgian francs (€1.49 million).