Life

An armed man briefly took an adult hostage at a nursery school south of Paris on Tuesday.

The intruder, who entered the school in Vitry-sur-Seine on the southern edge of the capital shortly before opening time, freed the hostage after a few hours and later surrendered to police, said Ludovic Monier, a policeman at the scene.

"At 12.10 (1010 GMT) the hostage-taker was taken out (of the building) calmly ... without any shots fired," Monier told reporters.

Last month, a 26-year-old man with a record of psychological problems, was shot and arrested by elite police in the southern city of Toulouse after taking several hostages at a bank and claiming to be a member of al Qaeda.

Toulouse, in the southwestern corner of France, was also the city where an al Qaeda-inspired gunman, 23-year-old Mohamed Merah, was shot dead by police after killing three soldiers, three Jewish children at a school, and a rabbi.