Venezuelan hostages free; gunmen held

Gunmen who had held more than 30 hostages inside a Venezuelan bank for more than 24 hours fled in an ambulance Tuesday and were caught along a roadside, where they surrendered and freed their last five captives.

“This nightmare is over,” Guarico state Gov. Eduardo Manuitt told state television.

The arrests, less than two hours after the gunmen fled the bank under a deal negotiated with police, ended an ordeal that began Monday morning with a botched bank robbery in this town southeast of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. The hostage standoff was the longest in a decade in Venezuela.

In the final hours, some hostages held up signs in the bank’s windows with pleas for help and used cellphones to call their relatives.

Under the deal with police, the gunmen were permitted to leave with five hostages who agreed to accompany them, freeing the rest of the captives at the bank. Police allowed the gunmen to flee because “they threatened to start killing the hostages in 20 minutes,” Manuitt said.