French supermarket hostage drama ends

updated 7:40 a.m. ET Oct. 21, 2009

PARIS - Armed assailants stormed a supermarket outside Paris before it opened Wednesday and held six hostages for several hours before the standoff was resolved peacefully.

The assailants burst into the Lidl supermarket in the suburb of Sevran early Wednesday, taking hostage five employees and a staff member of an outside company hired to clean the shop, said Michel Lemble, a human resources director for the German food chain.

All six were later released unharmed, apparently after successful police negotiations, he said.

A police official said that suspects demanded money from the store's safe and cash registers and also threatened the hostages.

Two suspects turned themselves in and were taken into custody, said a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of departmental policy.

Officers from an elite intervention team searched the store to verify that no other assailants were hiding inside, the official said.

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