JEDDAH, 9 February — A young Saudi woman in Baha held nearly 30 people captive at gun point for 10 hours inside a three-story building before giving herself up to police.

The woman, aged 25, fired at police when they cordoned off the building. She also fired at nearby apartments in response to initial pleas from local police that she surrender.

She only gave herself up after her father persuaded her to hand him over her gun.

Police rushed her to hospital for a checkup, and then to the police station to interrogate her. The incident occurred in Nawan, a village in Mekhwat.

Both her father and husband said the woman was mentally unstable. Police are still questioning her for having terrorized the 30 residents between 5 p.m. on Wednesday until 3 o’clock the next morning.

The woman, who has three children, arrived at her eldest brother’s apartment in the building at about 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday. She asked her youngest brother to fetch the rest of their family.

"At that time, I felt that there is something wrong. I was scared because she was holding a gun," her brother told Okaz newspaper.

Her husband, who showed up only after the incident was over, revealed that his wife has been suffering from mental problems for the past one-and-a-half years. "Last Tuesday, I noticed that she was behaving unusually," he recalled.

A.H. Al-Zahrani, a resident of the building, described the siege as tense and difficult.

"We had to spend 10 hours in the road while our wives and children were crying for help behind locked doors. Every time there was a gunshot, they became hysterical," he said.

J. Al-Ghamdi, 60, said he tried to keep himself calm by reading the Holy Qur’an. Ten-year-old Ahmad said the woman had threatened to kill him if he did not bring her brother, but he managed to run away.

The woman’s father arrived at the scene at about 2.30 a.m. "I went to the flat and talked to her from outside. Half an hour later, she put down the gun and gave herself up," he said.

The gun the woman was carrying apparently belonged to her brother, who works for a security agency.