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Jealous hostage-taker surrenders in Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY
Tue Oct 7, 2008 6:03am EDT

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A man shot and wounded a security guard and held 40 people hostage at a call center on Monday demanding to see his ex wife's boyfriend, but surrendered to police after a five-hour siege.

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Police said the 29-year-old man threatened to blow up the call center on the fifth floor of a Guatemala City building with an explosive device he was carrying.

Police negotiators persuaded the man to free his hostages and give himself up.

Police said the hostage-taker, Luis Fernando Escobar, had a "sentimental" problem and had demanded to see his former wife's boyfriend who worked at the call center.

The hostages, mainly employees of the call center, streamed out of the modern building, some of them in tears, after the man released them.

"Everyone is well, thank God," a woman relative of one of the hostages told Guatemalan radio as the stand-off ended.

(Reporting by Sarah Grainger and Cyntia Barrera Diaz, editing by Anthony Boadle)
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