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Kids freed in Manila bus drama

Filipino hostage taker Jun Ducat, top right, looks at police from a bus with children which he seized in Manila, the Philippines, yesterday. At least two hostage-takers including Ducat held hostage some 32 children and four teachers inside a bus as it passed the Manila City Hall yesterday morning. PHOTO: EPA

A man who took a busload of children and teachers hostage from his day-care center in the Philippines capital Manila yesterday freed them after a 10-hour standoff that he used to denounce corruption and demand better lives for impoverished children.

Clutching dolls, toys and backpacks, the children began filing off the bus shortly after 7pm.

Claiming to be armed with grenades and handguns, Amando "Jun" Ducat and up to two associates seized the bus carrying children from a day care center he runs in a poor district of the city.

He demanded better housing and education and railed against what he called corruption in government, but promised he would not harm the youngsters, who parents said were aged five or under.

After 10 hours of a tense standoff outside city hall, with elite police on standby and hysterical parents pleading for the release of their children, he said he would release the hostages and surrender at 7:00pm.

"He will just let the hostages go and give himself up," said police Senior Superintendent Cipriano Querol, spokesman for the negotiating team.

In exchange, police agreed to let the press cover the surrender.

"We acceded to that condition. We assured him that he will be in safe hands after he surrenders and that nothing will happen to him," Querol said on local television.

Action movie actor and senator Ramon Revilla, who earlier helped negotiate the release of one child who was sick, said Ducat asked that candles be lit at dusk when he surrenders.

"He wants the area around him to light up," Revilla told reporters.

"He said the candles would symbolize enlightenment."

Television images of the standoff showed the bus, which had been hired to take the children on a field trip, parked inside an area cordoned off by police.

"Please, please sir, let our children out," wailed Gemma Arroyo, the mother of a six-year-old girl on board the bus, as she reached police lines.

She said she thought her daughter was at a mountain resort, the destination of the pre-school's field trip, when she heard the news.

"They do that every year and then I saw the hostage drama on television. My heart broke," Arroyo told AFP, tears streaming down her face.

As the crisis entered its fifth hour, Ducat took the wheel of the bus and tried to flee but it was blocked by a firetruck, Querol said.

Nearby another terrified mother was screaming hysterically, demanding that police and negotiators do something to get the children freed.

Revilla, who had earlier carried one sick child off the bus, said that the suspects held "real grenades" and the other hostages were in good condition with food, soft drinks and toys.

Unarmed police occasionally pushed ice cream and water bottles through the driver's window.

Ducat earlier called a Manila radio station and demanded free education as well as free housing for a group of 145 pre-schoolers, including the hostages, at the Musmos Day Care Center he runs in the city's depressed Tondo district.

In a rambling discourse, he vowed to "surrender" peacefully if his demands were met.
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