An anonymous telephone caller told a newspaper in south-west France on Saturday (4 May) that Spanish banker Angel Baliasar Suarez, had been killed by his captors. Senor suarez was seized by three gunmen near his Paris apartment on Friday (3 May).

Senor Suarez is manager of the Paris branch of the Banco De Bilbao, which has its head office in the politically restive Spanish Basque country. The Paris branch has ben the target for protests in the past.

Senor Suarez was kidnapped when he went to his garage to drive his 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter to school from their large apartment in a fashionable quarter of Paris. Three hooded men, with pistols, two speaking unaccented French and the other, Spanish with a Latin American accent, leapt on them.

The two children were bound and gagged with adhesive tape while their father was bundled into his own car and driven off. Apart from the anonymous telephone call there has been no contact with the abductors, and police are discounting the 'phone call as a hoax.

SYNOPSIS: Thirty-six hours after he was kidnapped from his Paris home, there had still been no genuine word from the abductors of Angel Baliasar Suarez. Senor Suarez is the Paris branch manager of the Banco De Bilbao, which has its headquarters in the politically restive Spanish Basque country. An anonymous caller told a newspaper in south-west France that Senor Suarez had been killed, but police are discounting this as a hoax. The Spaniard was seized on Friday morning as he was about to take his seventeen-year-old son and fifteen-year-old daughter to school.

As they walked to their garage, three hooded men with pistols, two speaking unaccented French and the third Spanish with a Latin-american accent, grabbed them. The two youngsters were bound and gagged with adhesive tape while their father was bundled into his own car and driven off. The Paris branch of the Banco De Bilbac has been the target of minor attacks and anti-Spanish demonstrations in the past. Windows have been broken and the walls daubed with slogans. A bank official has said of the kidnappers silence: "we are waiting in anguish".