Gunman Shot After Taking 20 Hostage

Police stormed a tour bus Friday and killed a gunman who had held them at bay for eight hours, threatening to blow up more than 20 passengers after he killed the driver and a hostage.

The passengers included 10 Germans, four Americans, four Austrians, two Japanese and one each from Argentina, Turkey and Israel, a police spokesman said. No foreigners were among the dead.

“We were afraid he wanted to end it with a bang,” said Winrich Granitzka, commander of the special police unit that rushed onto the bus after fooling the gunman into thinking officers were approaching to give him a cellular phone.

The Russian-speaking gunman had tied sticks of wood to his body and the bus and held wires, fooling police into thinking he had a bomb.

Four passengers escaped during the standoff. The gunman opened fire on the last man to run, critically wounding him. He then ordered the wounded man to get back in the bus, “or I’ll kill your wife,” Granitzka said.

Police were vague about the gunman’s demands, but said they suspected his motive to be political. They said he asked to go to Paris and to speak with government officials. Once, he yelled something about the Russian mafia.

“We assume that he was not somebody who just wanted money. We assume his demands eventually would have had a political overtone,” Granitzka said.