Last update - 00:00 30/11/2007
Clinton 'grateful' staff safe after hostage incident ends
By Reuters
Senator Hillary Clinton expressed gratitude on Friday a hostage-taking incident at her presidential campaign office in New Hampshire ended peacefully and that her staff and volunteers were safe.
"It's been a difficult, but eventually gratifying day the way it worked
out," Clinton told reporters in Washington after the hostage-taking suspect surrendered. "We've had nothing on our minds except the safety of these young people who work for me."
Clinton said she was heading to New Hampshire to thank police and talk to
her staffers.
A man claiming to have a bomb strapped to him walked into Clinton's campaign offices Friday and took hostages according to police and witnesses said.
"The man had what appeared to be a bomb strapped to himself," said Bill Shaheen, a top state campaign official. "He took two hostages, both volunteers, and released others," Shaheen said.
The man ordered the hostages onto the floor and then released a mother and her baby, said State Police Maj. Michael Hambrook of New Hampshire State Police.
Witness Lettie Tzizik told television station WMUR of Manchester that she spoke to a woman shortly after she was released from the office by the suspect. The woman was carrying an infant, and crying.
"She said, 'You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,'" Tzizik said.
Clinton was not in the New Hampshire office Friday. She was scheduled to give an address at the Democratic National Committee meeting in Vienna, Virginia, but it was unclear if the address would go forward as planned.
Authorities were sending a tactical bomb unit to assist local police, and the area was evacuated, Hambrook said. A nearby school also was in lockdown.
The Clinton office is located in the downtown area in a strip of several storefronts.
Workers at the Rochester campaign office of Clinton's main rival in the running for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, were also evacuated, a campaign spokesman said. The office is four doors away from Clinton's.
Staffers in the nearby office of another Democratic contender, John Edwards, a few buildings away, were evacuated as well.
Related articles: