Four hostages held in a synagogue in Colleyville, a town in Texas, United States, were released safe and sound overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
Their kidnapper, who demanded the release of a Pakistani woman convicted of terrorism, died during the assault by the police.
“The hostage rescue team stormed the synagogue” and “the suspect is dead”, local police chief Michael Miller said during a press conference after a crisis which lasted almost ten hours.
All hostages have been released safe and sound, previously announced Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the equivalent of a state president.
“There is something wrong with America.
I will die "
According to journalists present at the scene, a loud explosion and gunshots rang out in the synagogue just before the governor's announcement A few hours earlier, when tough negotiations were taking place between the police and the kidnapper, a first hostage had been released unharmed.
ABC News, citing a source on site, reported before the release of the first hostage that the suspect was armed, was holding four people including a rabbi, and claimed to have planted bombs at unknown locations.
The hostage-taking occurred at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, a town of about 23,000 people on the outskirts of Dallas.
The voice of a man at times agitated could be heard on the retransmission of the religious service, on Facebook, before its interruption.
"There is something wrong with America," he said. "I'm going to die," he also said, repeatedly asking an unidentified caller that "his sister" be on the phone to him. The suspect, according to ABC News, claimed to be the "brother" of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist sentenced in 2010 by a New York federal court to 86 years in prison for attempting to shoot US servicemen while she was detained in Afghanistan. He was demanding his release, the channel reported, citing an official familiar with the matter on condition of anonymity.
Aafia Siddiqui is currently being held in a prison-hospital in Fort Worth, near Dallas.
Experts, however, pointed out that the word used by the man in Arabic was figurative and meant "sister" in the Islamic faith.
Aafia Siddiqui "is absolutely not involved" in the hostage-taking, her lawyer also indicated in a statement to CNN.
She confirmed that the man was not her brother, while ensuring that her client condemned these actions.
