By IRNA,
Ashkhabad : Unconfirmed reports coming from Turkmen media said that a group of people were taken hostage by gunmen in the capital’s northern suburbs on Friday night.
Prolonged gunfire was heard in the city over Friday night and early Saturday morning, the reports said.
There were reports over the hostage-taking affair by some saying that the hostages were a group of school students while others said that they were a group of a factory workers.
No official sources of Turkmenistan has so far commented over the event.
Ashkhabad’s northern suburbs were closed to public transportation from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning and surrounded by police.
A similar hostage-taking had taken place in Baharly region in Turkmenistan in 1998 during which a number of hostage-takers as well as hostages were killed in clash with police.