PARIS (AP) – Masked French gendarmes detained a 17-year-old who took a class full of preschoolers hostage Monday, releasing all the children safely after hours of tense negotiations that drew nationwide attention.

“The hostage-taking is over,” Jean-Marc Magda, aide to the mayor of the eastern French city of Besancon, told The Associated Press by telephone. All 20 children who had been seized and their teacher were released safely, he said.
The hostage-taker was detained by police officers from the elite GIPN force, who slipped into the school as the children were being brought lunch, Education Minister Luc Chatel said.
“We brought in meals, and it was at that moment that the GIPN was able to intervene, separate the children, free them and apprehend the hostage-taker,” he said in televised comments from the scene.
French television showed a wide-eyed girl being draped in a green blanket and carried away from the school. Police and worried families had surrounded the Charles Fourier preschool in Planoise, a neighborhood of housing projects with a big immigrant population on the western edge of Besancon.