Half a dozen children and their teacher were released safely Monday after being held hostage for four hours by a teenager armed with two swords at a nursery in the eastern French city of Besancon.
Officials said the man, whom one described as suffering from a personality disorder, had been arrested and was being questioned by police from France's elite GIGN force.
"There is no more violence, it all went calmly," Besancon Mayor Jean-Louis Fousseret told iTele television. "This is a person who is in a very bad mental state," he added of the hostage-taker, who he said lived locally.
Five or six children and the teacher were believed to be still in the preschool when the officers entered around lunchtime, Fousseret said.
The masked police pointed their firearms at the school's windows and doors as they entered, in images shown on French TV. They were in contact by telephone with the hostage-taker before the last group of children was released.
The children, aged four to six, were wrapped in green wool blankets and carried away by relatives who had waited anxiously outside as police negotiated with the hostage-taker by telephone.
Officials said the young man turned up at the Charles Fourier nursery shortly before 9 a.m. (1 a.m. ET) brandishing two swords and mumbling that he "wanted something."
He initially took around 20 children hostage, later releasing around 14 of them, and finally letting the last half dozen go free just before 1 p.m.
'Personality disorder'
His motive was still unclear, although Jean-Marc Magda, administrative head of Fousseret's office, told Reuters he was known to suffer from depression and psychological problems.
"He has a personality disorder. Contact has been made with his doctor," Magda said.
Education Minister Luc Chatel was at the nursery, which was cordoned off from the public. Other children and nursery teachers had been evacuated and taken to a nearby school.
Earlier in the morning, some of the evacuated children cried as their parents arrived to take them away, a neighbor said.
'Traumatizing'Pupils were still inside the adjacent elementary school while the events unfolded.
"It's a bit traumatizing ... We are just across from where everything is happening," principal Alain Lietta told The Associated Press. The schools' entrances are about 60 yards apart. Normally some children go home at lunch but "today, this poses a problem," he said.
He said the children in the elementary school were informed about the situation. "We wanted to give them a maximum of honesty and clarity so as not to scare them."
Education Minister Luc Chatel arrived at the preschool and spoke with the families.
President Nicolas Sarkozy did not comment publicly about the hostage-taking.
Sarkozy first vaulted into France's national consciousness during a similar hostage-taking in 1993 in the posh Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where as mayor he helped free nursery school children and a teacher who had been taken hostage by a masked gunman.
