School hostage drama ends, captives freed

Malaysia cops storm pre-school, shoot hammer-wielding man who took 34 hostages

Malaysia cops storm pre-school, shoot hammer-wielding man who took 34 hostages

Malaysian police stormed a kindergarten and shot a man carrying a machete who held 30 children and four teachers hostage for six hours yesterday in a tense standoff. The hostages were unharmed.

The unidentified man was in hospital in critical condition after sustaining a single bullet wound to the head, said Jalaluddin Abdul Rahman, deputy police chief in southern Johor state.


Overjoyed parents wave to their children as security officials bring them out from the school after the successful operation. Medics take away the injured hostage taker after a sharpshooter shot him in the head


"All the 30 children, aged between 3 and 5 years, and their four teachers are safe," he was quoted as saying. A Johor police officer confirmed Jalaluddin's comments.

The officer, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said the man was wielding a machete and a hammer when he barged into the kindergarten in a residential area in Johor early in the morning, sparking a standoff with police.

The man, believed to be suffering from mental problems, forced the hostages to go upstairs in the two-storey building.

During negotiations with police, the man threatened to kill the children unless he was given a gun, the officer said.
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Special forces later managed to enter the ground floor and were heading up the stairs when the man attacked them with his weapons and a fire extinguisher, the officer said.

Police had no choice but to shoot the man, he said, adding that they were investigating his identity. The children were heard singing in what was believed to be an attempt to calm the man.

Sieged!

Beslan School Crisis
In September 2004, armed Chechen Islamist militants took more than 1,100 people (including 777 children) hostage at a school in Beslan, Russia. At the end of a three-day siege, 380 were killed including 186 children.

Manila Hostage Crisis
On August 23, 2010, a disgruntled former senior inspector Rolando Mendoza, from the Manila Police hijacked a tour bus carrying 25 people. At the end of the 10-hour stand-off eight hostages and Mendoza were killed.

Stockholm Syndrome
Is described as a real paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy towards their captors. FBI's Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly 27% of victims show signs of the syndrome