WORLD> Europe
2 escape French prison, take hostages, recaptured
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-17 21:07

PARIS -- Two convicts who broke out of a French prison and took bystanders hostage were captured Tuesday after a shootout in a suburban Paris highway tunnel, police said.

One of the prisoners, Christophe Khider, has been hospitalized with gunshot wounds, two police officials said. The other, Omar Top El Hadj, has a slight arm injury and is being questioned by investigators.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of agency policy.

Police say Khider and El Hadj escaped from a prison at Moulins-Yzeure in central France on Sunday, before starting on a circuitous two-day journey that took them over a swath of northern France.

They took two prison guards hostage as they escaped, then let them go, police said. The escaped men then stole a car and took a man and his grandson hostage. They used the man's bank card to withdraw cash and pay for a toll road, then freed the two, police said. Later the prisoners stole another car and briefly took another captive.

Police tracked the convicts down overnight and stopped them before dawn Tuesday in a highway tunnel near Fontenay-sous-Bois, southeast of Paris.

The police officials say Khider apparently opened fire on the officers, who responded with gunfire.

Khider's wife and El Hadj's sister were detained while police searched for the pair.

Khider, 37, had been serving a life sentence for an armed robbery in which he killed a hostage. He tried to escape prison once before, in 2001.

El Hadj, 30, was serving time for armed robbery.