Turkey: Gendarme operation ends hostage standoff

BOLU – A passenger, who was taken hostage by a driver’s assistant for seven hours, has been freed after an operation conducted by gendarmes. Assistant had argued with the driver and was requesting the driver to come back to the bus, before he released the remaining hostage.

No one was hurt during the operation.

A driver and his assistant on a bus traveling from Samsun to Istanbul had started to argue around Bolu this morning at 3.30 a.m. Assistant Tabak seized the driver Imdat Gumus’s gun and took all passengers and the driver hostage.

Driver Gumus fled when the bus had to stop and alerted the police. Later Tabak released all passengers apart from two teenage girls. Tabak fired on an Anatolian Agency journalist Kenan Gurbuz trying to take a photo. No one was injured.

Tabak wants the driver to return to the bus, before he releases the hostages. Later on he released on of the girls and asked for some beer.