Police save passengers from bus hijacking

POLICE stormed a hijacked Berlin city bus yesterday in a move to end a four-and-a-half hour hostage drama that began when an armed bank robber commandeered the bus.

Several shots rang out and police commandos stormed the bus through the rear window. Two people were led away quickly from the scene. Shortly afterwards, police said the hostage-taking was over.

“The hostage-taker is injured, the hostages are unharmed,” police spokesman Christian Matzdorf said.

The drama began when an armed man robbed a Berlin bank with an accomplice, then commandeered the bus and took hostages. All but two captives got away before the bus stopped and was ringed by police in a tense standoff.

It’s not clear when the accomplice slipped away, but police think he was no longer on the bus.

The hostage-taker was shot, apparently in the shoulder, by police storming the bus, Matzdorf said. No police where injured.

More than 20 passengers were aboard when the bus was hijacked outside the bank, N-24 television reported, though police said they had no precise figure.

After about an hour on the road the yellow double-decker, apparently cornered by unmarked police cars, came to a stop on a thoroughfare between two commuter rail bridges in the Schoeneberg district.

Police sealed off the area as sharpshooters took up position along a wall about 20 metres away, while police commandos in helmets and bulletproof vests surrounded the bus, some occasionally peering in the windows.

Officials negotiated for several hours with the armed man in an effort to free the captives, a passenger and a policewoman who followed him onto the bus after the hold-up, said Matzdorf, revising earlier reports that the bus driver was among the two final hostages. He refused to say whether the hijacker had made demands.

The earlier gunfire on the bus could have come from the hijacker or the captive policewoman, Matzdorf said.

The bus was commandeered after two men held up a Commerzbank branch in a busy shopping street in the southern district of Steglitz.

Witnesses said two masked men entered the bank, one with a pistol, and shouted “Money, money”. They made off with an undetermined amount, then hijacked the bus outside.