A man in southwest China's Sichuan Province has ended up killing himself after a four-hour stand-off with police after he kidnapped a local television hostess and threatened to kill her with a gun.

The man, an ex-convict aged about 40, put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger when his attempt to escape Yibin City failed as more than 400 officers surrounded him around midnight on Friday, the local Huaxi Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.

The kidnapped anchorwoman and a police officer were injured, but both were stable.

The report said the hostess was kidnapped when she was just about to drive away after shopping at a local store around 8pm that day.

The hijacker put a gun to her head and ordered her to drive as fast as she could, the report said.

As she was swinging around a corner the woman secretly managed to hit the re-dial button on her mobile phone, allowing a friend to overhear her conversation with the kidnapper and quickly alert police.

Police soon tracked the car and set up barriers along the route the car was taking.

Finding himself trapped, the kidnapper became angry and fired a shot at a police officer.

Then, after almost two hours of talking with police negotiators, the kidnapper had seemed to have calmed down and even pulled his gun away from the anchorwoman's head.

However, he suddenly turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger. The gun was home made, police said.

(Shanghai Daily December 8, 2008)