Police shot and killed a man who took a staff member hostage in a university in central Hubei Province Wednesday morning, local police said.

The man took a female staff hostage with a gun in a room on the second floor of the office building of Wuhan University at around 9 a.m., the Wuhan Public Security Bureau said.

Police negotiated with him but found he had no clear demands. In the rescue operation, an armed policeman disguised as a canteen man to send meal to him and went into the room, but was shot in the head by the hijacker, the bureau said.

Police immediately shot and killed the hijacker. The female staff, who works on Communist Party affairs, was unharmed.

The seriously injured policeman has been hospitalized.

The hijacker, surnamed Zhou, worked in the university as a logistical worker. He had been sentenced to two years and a half in prison for illegally confining others, with a three-year reprieve. He was still under police supervision.

Police are still investigating the case.

(Xinhua News Agency June 3, 2009)