MANILA (updated)- Philippine police stormed a tourist bus on which an armed man held 15 hostages, and local media reported the hostage-taker, a sacked police officer, had been killed. Police were shown by local media jumping into the bus after a tense and lengthy stakeout. The Red Cross said four hostages had survived and TV images showed police removing some bodies from the bus.
The gunman, identified as 55-year-old Rolando Mendoza who was armed with an M-16 assault rifle, had stopped the bus, which initially had 25 people on board, across a wide road in Manila's biggest park on Monday morning. Around 6 p.m. (11:00 a.m. British time), a man could be seen handcuffed to a pole at the front of the bus, shortly after Manila Vice Mayor Isko Moreno said he was on the way to deliver a letter from the Ombudsman's office, the public complaints agency that had recommended Mendoza's sacking. Earlier, via a handwritten note stuck to the bus door, Mendoza said a "big deal" would happen after 3 p.m., but the deadline passed without incident. A ninth hostage, a Filipino, had been released after that deadline, and negotiations continued as the stand-off stretched to almost nine hours, with rain falling in the evening after a hot day.
