
The latest Paris hostage crisis ended without bloodshed today after a gunman who claimed he had a Kalashnikov and grenades surrendered to police.

In a sign of the increasingly tense atmosphere in the city, the alarm was raised just before 1pm, with reports of a 'terrorist incident' in Colombes.

Dozens of armed officers trained their weapons on a post office where the man had reportedly taken people hostage.

But it turned out to be a 31-year-old 'depressed and unstable' local man on medication who had 'romantic problems'.

Dramatic pictures show the suspect holding his hands in the air after emerging from the post office as armed police point their weapons at him.

He is made to kneel on the ground as officers move in to handcuff him, all the time aiming their guns at his head. The hostages escaped unharmed.

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Game is up: The suspected hostage-taker emerges from the post office with his hands up as police in riot gear train their weapons on him

Taken into custody: The suspect in a hostage taking situation is detained by armed police outside the post office in Colombes

Handcuffed: The alleged hostage-taker is arrested by French Research and Intervention Brigades (BRI) police officers

Arrested: The suspect turned out to be a 31-year-old 'depressed and unstable' local man on medication who had 'romantic problems'

Some 80 heavily armed RAID polices commandos arrived within minutes and surrounded the post office, where the man was said to be holding at least two hostages.

But after about an hour he gave himself up and turned out to be a man who 'is known to police and who is on medication for psychiatric problems,' said a local police source.

Police had surrounded the post office in Colombes, around seven miles from the centre of the French capital after reports that he 'heavily armed'.

Armed police train their weapons on a post office in the Paris suburb of Colombes where a suspected gunman claimed to have taken hostages

French Research and Intervention Brigades (BRI) police officers stand guard near the post office in the Paris suburb of Colombes

Closing in: The suspect reportedly phoned police claiming he had taken hostages in the post office on 158 boulevard du general de Gaulle

The gunman reportedly phoned police to confirm that he had taken captives in the post office on 158 boulevard du general de Gaulle.

BFM TV, citing an unidentified source, had earlier said the hostage-taking was not related to last week's attacks in Paris.

It comes as Belgian authorities raided an Islamist cell planning attacks against police as dozens of people were arrested in sweeps across Europe, keeping the continent on alert one week after the Paris massacres.

Two suspected jihadists were shot dead in a police raid in the eastern Belgian town of Verviers last night.

The post office is seen with its metal security shutters down as negotiations get under way between the suspect and police units

An aerial view showing police activity around the scene of the hostage crisis in the Parisien suburb of Colombes

Terror: Armed police take up their positions near a post office where an armed man was holed up in a Paris suburb

Alert: The area around the post office was cordoned off, with a helicopter flying overhead and elite security forces on the ground

Prosecutors said 13 suspects had been detained across Belgium, with two more held in France.

French police separately detained 12 people in the suburbs of Paris in connection with last week's attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, a Jewish supermarket and a policewoman, in which 17 people were killed.

Hundreds of German police meanwhile raided alleged Islamist sites in Berlin, arresting two men suspected of being part of a group planning to carry out an attack in Syria.