Bank robbers' Hollywood style chase across Europe ends without tragedy

Three masked gunmen who were chased by a convoy of police 1,600km across eastern Europe after botching a bank robbery in Germany, released the last of their hostages unhurt and surrendered yesterday in Ukraine. The drama began after a resident in Wrestedt saw a bank robbery in progress and sounded the alarm. Germany police held back from storming the bank after the robbers took three hostages. With blazing guns the robbers then escaped from the bank with two female bank employees as hostages and about euro 300,000. Police said the robbers had held the hostages at gunpoint for more than 24 hours as they sped across Germany, Poland and Ukraine, border guards and various police roadblocks in Poland were unable to stop them. In Ukraine the gunmen stopped in Rivne, 300km west of Kiev and engaged in negotiations with police. A Reuters reporter then saw the fugitives being escorted to a black police car from a cafe next to a service station where police general Anatoly Frantsuz negotiated their peaceful surrender. The men were German nationals who had emigrated from the former Soviet Union. "They were afraid and did not want to give themselves up to German police," said Frantsuz. The kidnapping drama is a grim reminder of a similar incident in 1988, during which bank robbers killed two female hostages they had seized in the town of Gladbeck (Germany) after holding them captive during a two-day motorway chase with police. (Zycie, p.1; Gazeta Wyborcza, p.1; Reuters)