AMSTERDAM/THE HAGUE: A number of folks have been taken hostage in a city in central Netherlands on Saturday (Mar 29), based on police, with homes evacuated and the city centre closed down.
Three hostages have since been launched however the incident continues to be ongoing, the police stated in an announcement on X.
It’s not identified how many individuals are being held however native media reported round 4 or 5 persons are concerned.
A number of particular police models had been deployed to the scene, a constructing within the centre of city, police stated in an announcement posted on social media.
They added that 150 houses had been evacuated and the general public was requested to avoid the realm.
Individuals had been taken hostage on the native Petticoat bar early on Saturday morning by a person with weapons and explosives, nationwide newspaper de Telegraaf reported, citing a number of nameless sources.
“We see there are numerous questions concerning the motive. Right now, there isn’t any indication of a terrorist motive,” police stated.
The Netherlands has seen a sequence of terror assaults and plots however not on the size of different European international locations, similar to France or Britain.
In 2019, the nation was shocked by a capturing spree on a tram within the metropolis of Utrecht that claimed 4 lives.
A Turkish-born man recognized as Gokmen Tanis later admitted a terror motive for the rampage that nearly shut down the nation’s fourth-biggest metropolis.
Additionally in 2019, Dutch police charged two suspected jihadists with planning a terror assault utilizing suicide bombs and automobile bombs. Authorities stated an assault was deliberate that 12 months.
A younger Afghan man recognized solely as “Jawed S.” stabbed two American vacationers at Amsterdam Central Station in 2018, later telling judges he needed “to guard the Prophet Mohammed”.
The assault got here a day after far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders introduced he was cancelling a plan to stage a cartoon competitors to caricature the Prophet Mohammed.
On the time, Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid urged Muslims to assault Dutch troops after Wilders’ “hostile act by this nation (the Netherlands) in opposition to all Muslims”.
In essentially the most critical incident involving a terror assault, outspoken Dutch anti-Islam movie director Theo van Gogh was shot and stabbed to loss of life in 2004 in Amsterdam by a person with ties to a Dutch Islamist terror community.
