A hostage situation in the northern French town of Roubaix was apparently not linked to the Paris attacks earlier this month and has ended with the hostages now safe, officials said on Tuesday.
The local authorities said the hostages were now in a "secure place".
Frederic Fevre, the prosecutor for the northern French city of Lille, told reporters that one hostage-taker had been killed, and that the police were hunting for other suspects who were on the run.
Police sources said the Roubaix incident most likely concerned a planned armed robbery.
"This is apparently not a terrorist attack, it's apparently a robbery," one police source said.
France remains on high alert after the 13 November attacks in and around Paris in which 130 people were killed, and as a result of this, situations such as the one in Roubaix have taken on a greater significance than usual.
