Police free 2 people after hostage alarm at German bank but find no perpetrators

By The Associated Press
May 8, 2026 | 9:44 AM

BERLIN (AP) — Police in Germany entered a bank in a small German town Friday and rescued two people from a locked room, hours after officers were called to respond to a hostage situation.

Regional police said they were alerted to the situation at the Volksbank branch in Sinzig, a town of about 17,000 people in the Rhine valley near Koblenz, at about 9 a.m. local time. They said they believed there were “several perpetrators and hostages” in the bank and the driver of an armored van was a hostage.

Shortly before 3 p.m., police said special forces entered the bank and freed two people unhurt from a locked room. Police said they found no hostage-takers.

They said that the perpetrator or perpetrators appeared to have left immediately after locking the two people into the vault, but it wasn’t clear how that happened. Police did not indicate whether the perpetrators made away with any cash or valuables.

Iran attacks Bahrain and Kuwait following US strikes, threatens to end talks to end the war

By The Associated Press
June 28, 2026 | 1:26 AM

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched drone and missile attacks Sunday targeting Bahrain and Kuwait in response to U.S. airstrikes that hit the Islamic Republic, and threatened a “complete halt” could come to negotiations to end the war if Washington continues its attacks. Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf that once carried a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas, without Iran's direct oversight sparked the crossfire now gripping the region. A multinational maritime body overseen by the U.S. Navy said Saturday that it would expand a route near Oman in the Strait of Hormuz to allow for both inbound and outbound traffic — setting up a new flashpoint with Tehran. Iran insists it alone must govern the strait after the war, upending decades of the world considering that the strait was international waters free for all, despite its sitting in Iran and Oman's territorial waters. Tehran has twice attacked vessels going through the Oman route, backed by a United Nations agency, in recent days. Early Sunday, the U.S. military’s Central Command said it struck Iranian military “surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities and minelayer capabilities” following an attack on a ship at sea early Saturday morning. That ship, the Panamanian-flagged tanker Kiku, carried crude oil for the state-run energy company of Qatar, a key negotiator between Iran and the United States.

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