Toulouse bank hostages freed in raid French police commandos after the raid on a bank where a man claiming to be linked to al-Qaida seized four hostages. The hostage-taker was shot in the leg. Photograph: Guillaume Horcajuelo/EPA A gunman claiming links to al-Qaida was arrested after holding employees of a bank in southern France hostage for almost seven hours on Wednesday. Armed police stormed the building as the man, who was reported to have psychological problems, was setting fire to the office. The assailant released two women hostages in the afternoon. Two male hostages, including the bank manager, were rescued unharmed. The gunman was shot in the leg in the raid by an elite team of French police. His condition was not thought to be serious. The siege happened not far from the former home of the drive-by killer Mohamed Merah, who traumatised France in March when he shot dead seven people - three Jewish children, a rabbi and three French paratroopers. Police were called to the CIC bank in an eastern suburb of Toulouse after the alarm was raised shortly after 10am local time when a 26-year-old man went into the bank and demanded cash. When staff failed to take his demands seriously and refused to hand over money, the man pulled out a gun and shot into the air. He told police he was acting for "political motives" and claimed connections with al-Qaida. Relatives of the hostage-taker said he was known to social services and had been "in a rage." He was said to have been under treatment for schizophrenia but had stopped taking his medication. Police blocked surrounding roads as sharpshooters encircled the building. Bomb-disposal experts were them dispatched to the scene after the man claimed to have explosives. The man said he was linked to al-Qaida and demanded to speak to officers from Raid, the elite special forces police brigade based in Paris. Members of Raid negotiated with Merah for 32 hours during a siege of his Toulouse flat, which they finally stormed, shooting him dead. Merah, who killed three French paratroopers before turning his guns on a private Jewish school where he killed a rabbi and three young children, also claimed links to al-Qaida. During the siege a police union spokesman told Reuters: "We have no idea if his claim to be linked to al-Qaida is serious or fantasy." On Wednesday, a school near the bank, where children were due to sit their baccalaureate examinations, was evacuated. It is the second time in a month that Toulouse, known as the "pink city" because of the rose-coloured stone of its public buildings, has been the scene of a hostage-taking. Two weeks ago, a 50-year-old man brandishing a shotgun took a security guard hostage at the headquarters of Météo-France, the French weather service. An elite squad of police marksmen shot the man, who remains in a critical condition in hospital. The security guard escaped without injury. Cédric Delagean, an official for the police union, Unsa, told Reuters the hostage-taking appeared to be an attempted armed robbery that went wrong. A police source told journalists at the scene: "The most probable hypothesis is that this guy is crazy, but that doesn't make him less dangerous."