Police detain Turkish Airlines hostage-taker

Typography

Police, including special forces teams, had set up a security cordon around the area where the man had been holding a female employee of Turkish Airlines.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Police detained a Turkish Airlines employee on Tuesday after he released a woman he had been holding hostage with a gun at the company's headquarters, a company spokeswoman told Reuters.

Police, including special forces teams, had set up a security cordon around the area where the man had been holding a female employee of Turkish Airlines.

"The matter is closed. The man was persuaded (to release the woman)," the spokeswoman said.

State-run Anatolian news agency said the man and the woman had been in a relationship and that he had carried out the hostage-taking after she left him and rejected his subsequent advances.

!ADVERTISEMENT!

It said the woman was shaken but unharmed.

Earlier it said the man had first detained three people at a canteen in the building's basement before releasing two of them, saying he wanted to talk to the woman.

(Reporting by Irem Koker and Daren Butler; editing by Andrew Roche)