Ex-teacher takes pupils hostage in French school

NANTES, France, March 9 (Reuters) - An armed, unemployed teacher today took 20 pupils and three adults hostage at his former school in western France, local officials said.

Police surrounded the secondary school in Sable-sur-Sarthe in western France and established contact with the man, who barricaded the pupils aged 17 to 18, a teacher and two other adults into a classroom.

Other pupils were evacuated from the school and a hotline was set up for anxious parents.

A spokesman for the town authorities in Sable-sur-Sarthe said the man was a 33-year-old supply teacher who had recently worked at the Colbert de Torcy school but was now out of work, and was carrying a hand gun.

''The man wants to talk to the press about job problems,'' the spokesman said.

Local officials initially put the number of hostages at 18 pupils and two adults, but later raised the number.

The mayor of Sable-sur-Sarthe, about 220 km southwest of Paris and 100 km east of the city of Nantes, is Francois Fillon, a former education minister.

The drama comes at a sensitive time for conservative Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who is under pressure over an unpopular youth job creation plan.

Aides said Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was monitoring the situation during a visit to the French Antilles Islands but he announced no plans to cut short his trip.

Sarkozy was mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly when a man took children hostage at a local school in May 1993.

Sarkozy helped negotiate with the hostage-taker before crack police broke into a classroom, killed the man and freed the remaining hostages. The other hostages had been gradually released as a result of the negotiations.

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