1.
GV French Embassy. (2 shots)
0.14

2.
CU Security guards crouched behind car.
0.19

3.
CU Top floor of Embassy.
0.24

4.
GV Security guards rushing into Embassy.
0.32

5.
GV Police and army looking on. (4 shots)
0.45

6.
CU Top floor of Embassy.
0.53

7.
GV Security guards rushing across road.
1.01

8.
GV PAN ACROSS Tarmac to Executive Jet on runway.
1.20



Initials VS 1.10 VS 1.19


TELERECORDING

Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: After a day of agonising suspense, the gunmen besieged in the French Embassy in The Hague, still had not released the nine hostages - including the French Ambassador - who they were holding until an extremist Japanese militant was released by the French authorities.

Throughout Saturday (14 September) the Embassy was ringed by armed police, among them trained sharpshooters, and they were backed-up by a detachment of Dutch Marines.

The windows of the fourth floor room of the Embassy, where the three gunmen - all apparently Japanese - were holding their victims, remained shuttered. The gunmen nevertheless maintained telephone communication with the emergency command post established at the American Embassy, only a few doors away.

In the post Dutch, French, and Japanese officials tried to make a deal with the gunmen and break the deadlock. The gunmen, who claimed to be members of an extremist Japanese organisation, were demanding the freedom of Yutaka Fiuruya, who had been rushed to Schiphol Airport in Holland from a Paris jail, during the first few hours of the siege, which had begun on Friday afternoon.

Fiuruya, however, was kept at the Airport throughout the day. Japanese officials claimed that he did not appear to know the gunmen, and was reluctant to allow himself to be handed over to them.

In Paris, however, a French Interior Ministry official denied that Fiuruya was refusing to be handed over, and said that he was still under surveillance in the French aircraft at the Dutch airport.

Police said they did not envisage any armed attack on the gunmen, although sharpshooters were standing by ready for action. They said that the gunmen had made no request for food or other provisions.