A ten-hour siege, in which 32 children were taken hostage on a school bus in the Philippines, ended peacefully today when a man surrendered, handing a grenade to a local politician.

Jun Ducat, the owner of a day care centre in Manila who has mounted attention-grabbing stunts in the past, gave himself up to police at 7pm local time in Manila as he promised to do in a rambling speech earlier today. He said that he taken the children hostage to denounce government corruption and improve their lives

The children and two teachers were taken hostage early this morning by Mr Ducat and one other hostage-taker, who taped a hand-written note to the bus windshield saying he was armed with two grenades, an Uzi assault rifle and a .45-caliber pistol, police said.

A local politician allowed on to the bus to negotiate with Mr Ducat said he was holding a grenade with the pin pulled out, and that his hands were shaking.

Mr Ducat and his alleged accomplice demanded housing and education for 145 children in Mr Ducat’s 4-year-old day-care center in Manila’s poor Tondo district where the incident, televised live around the world, appeared to have begun. The driver was released soon afterward.

"I love these kids; that’s why I am here," Mr Ducat, identified by police and parents as the day-care center owner, told DZMM radio by mobile phone. "I invited the children for a field trip.

"You can be assured that I cannot hurt the children. In case I need to shed blood, I will not be the first to fire. I am telling the policemen, have pity on these children."

One child with a fever was released after four hours and was driven away in an ambulance.

Police and black-clad bomb squads and SWAT teams surrounded the bus . Ambulances, fire trucks and crisis teams from the Social Welfare Department also were on standby.

Mothers of some hostages went on radio to tearfully appeal for their children’s safety.

"We are asking him to free the children, to let our kids out," said Dema Arroyo, 29, mother of 6-year-old hostage Angelica. "We will forgive him if he will free our children. We have no ill feelings toward him. He is a good person."

TV footage showed the kindergarten-age children, one in sunglasses, waving from the windows, and a woman could be seen making a hand signal asking for a phone as one of the gunmen held a grenade at her shoulder.

The woman reassuringly massaged the shoulders of one boy as she walked away from the front of the bus and the curtains were pulled shut. The children were allowed to wave again later, apparently to show they were unharmed, before the curtains were closed again.

Mr Ducat said the hostage-taking was for the children’s benefit.

"To the parents of the kids I am with ... I am asking for justice so they can have continued education up to college," he said.

Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral talked with Mr Ducat and offered assurances that the children would get a good education.

About two and a half hours after the standoff began, Senator Bong Revilla, who said he knows Mr Ducat, was allowed to board the bus for negotiations and saw him holding the hand grenade. Some were broadcast live on radio, the sounds of the kids playing and talking in the background.

The engine of the purple-and-gray bus continued to run, providing air conditioning as midday temperatures reached 34 degrees C (93 F).

Mr Ducat, who claimed to have food for two days, was involved in a previous hostage-taking in 1989 involving two priests in which he used fake grenades, but the priests did not press charges in what was described as a contract dispute, officials said. Mr Revilla said he had no doubt that the grenade this time was real.

Mr Ducat once protested against the high price of rice by pulling a wagon loaded with sacks of rice about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Nueva Ecija province to Manila.

During an election campaign in 1998, he climbed to the top of a tower to protest against the candidacy of a politician who he said was not a real Filipino citizen.

"I know him as a very, very passionate individual who has his own kind of thinking on the solutions to our problems," Manila Mayor Lito Atienza said. "But we cannot agree with his ways."