Hostage | featured news

Four Americans taken hostage by Somali pirates off East Africa were shot and killed by their captors Monday, the U.S. military said, marking the first time U.S. citizens have been killed in a wave of pirate attacks plaguing the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean for years.

A 15-year-old boy took 23 of his classmates and a teacher hostage in a classroom at a small-town Wisconsin high school on Monday, shooting himself as police broke in.

The U.S. military in Iraq said on Sunday that up to 24 people were killed in a church hostage taking incident in Baghdad, including up to 10 hostages.

A Scottish aid worker who was taken hostage two weeks ago by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan was killed Saturday during an unsuccessful rescue raid.

Soldiers firing automatic weapons and concussion grenades rescue President Rafael Correa from a hospital where he was trapped for more than 12 hours by police rebelling over benefit cuts.

Bank robbers pulled off a dramatic heist Friday, strapping a suspected bomb to a teller and ordering him to steal as much money as he could grab from the vault - all while his father was being held hostage.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said more than a dozen people, including several journalists, could be held liable in the Manila hostage standoff in which eight Hong Kong tourists died.

A man who railed against the Discovery Channel's environmental programming for years burst into the company's headquarters with at least one explosive device strapped to his body Wednesday and took three people hostage at gunpoint before police shot him to death, officials said.

The Philippines acknowledged "inadequacies" in handling a hostage crisis that killed eight Hong Kong tourists, as anger over the botched negotiations erupted Tuesday in Hong Kong with demonstrations and harsh words.

A dismissed policeman armed with an automatic rifle seized a bus Monday in the Philippine capital with 25 people on board, mostly Hong Kong tourists. ...