Police Kill Serb Who Held 22 Kids Hostage

A Bosnian Serb gunman who escaped from jail held 22 Serb schoolchildren hostage for eight hours Thursday before police shot and killed him.

The man, identified as 22-year-old Jugoslav Mihajlovic, had demanded more than $650,000 and a car to escape to a nearby town controlled by Muslims and Croats, reports from official news agencies said.

The heavily armed man set off two hand grenades, slightly wounding three of his captives, before police killed him, according to reports. He had escaped from prison five days earlier in the Serb-held Bosnian city of Doboj.

He seized the hostages at a school in the Bosnian town of Teslic and said he wanted to go to neighboring Tesanj, which is held by the Muslim-led Bosnian government.

The Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA and Croatian news agency HINA gave no other details of the children’s eight-hour ordeal.