By Maggie Fox
SILVER SPRING, Maryland (Reuters) - A man carrying a gun and possibly with explosives strapped to his body took a small number of hostages in the Discovery Channel headquarters building in suburban Washington on Wednesday.
"Right now we have an unconfirmed number of hostages, a small number of hostages that are with the suspect at this point," Tom Manger, Montgomery County police chief, told reporters.
The man entered the building wearing what appeared to be metallic canister devices on his front and back and he pulled out a hand gun, Manger said.
"The man told everyone to just stay still, and he has remained on the first floor area," he said.
It was unconfirmed whether a shot had been fired or whether there were any injuries, Manger said.
A U.S. law enforcement official said he believed the hostage-taker was named James Lee. A man called James Lee of San Diego was arrested in February 2008 after throwing money into the air in a protest outside the Discovery building, the Montgomery County Gazette reported that year.
Police sealed off the area around the building and SWAT teams were at the scene in the suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland. The building was ordered evacuated and children were removed from a day-care centre.
"He appears to have some sort of explosive device on his person," police Captain Paul Starks told reporters. He said the police were in contact with the suspect, who had made some demands that police would not go into.
Police were watching the suspect on the building's closed-circuit security system.
ENVIRONMENTAL DEMANDS
Discovery employees posted updates on the situation on Twitter including a link to a website, http://savetheplanetprotest.com/, in which demands are made against Discovery to cover environmental issues. It was not confirmed that these demands were made by the man barricaded in the building.
Police in nearby Takoma Park, Maryland, sent out an e-mail to residents that said, "an unknown, armed Asian male (is) barricaded in the building with at least one hostage."
Montgomery County Police Corporal Dan Friz said of the suspect: "His concerns are with the Discovery Corporation right now." He would not go into further details.
A reporter from the local ABC affiliate said he saw an ambulance crew wheel a gurney into the building about an hour after the incident began at 1 p.m. EDT, but there was no official word of casualties.
Discovery Communications says it reaches 1.5 billion subscribers in more than 180 countries with the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel and Planet Green networks.
Among the demands to Discovery on savetheplanetprotest.com were calls for an end to programs "promoting War" and those "encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants." "Saving the Planet means saving what's left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population," the website said.
(Reporting by Jackie Frank, Bill Trott, Diane Bartz, Xavier Briand, David Storey; writing by Jackie Frank, editing by Vicki Allen)
