AMSTERDAM — Three people have been killed and five seriously injured after a shooting incident this morning on a light rail train in the Dutch city of Utrecht, and a suspect has been arrested after a day-long manhunt.
At 6:40 p.m. local time, as he concluded a media briefing, police chief Robbie van Bree told reporters, “I just heard that the suspect we were hunting has been arrested.” No additional information was available.
The attack occurred at 10:45 a.m. local time when a gunman opened fire onboard a tram at 24 Oktoberplein, a square and light rail station in the west of Utrecht. Dutch authorities, believing the incident to be a terrorist attack, declared a “Level 5” security situation, the highest level of security threat. It was the first time such a threat level had been declared.
The initial search for one or more suspects left much of the center of Utrecht in lockdown; later, authorities said they had blocked all routes in and out of the city while continuing the search for a 37-year-old man born in Turkey they said was “associated with the incident.”
— Updated at 1:20 p.m. CDT with arrest of suspect. Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Thank you media for giving this sicko just what they wanted: international publicity. Drop it. There is no sign that advertising terrorism will slow it down.
Fortunately no one besides me remembers the hijacking of a train in northeastern Netherlands in 1978 by ethnic Indonesian terrorists who had a problem with the government of Indonesia. I remember it because that was two weeks before my scheduled trip to the same area of the Netherlands.
The same goofs also hijacked a nearby elementary school. The train was liberated by the Koninglijk Marine (the royal navy) and the school by the Koninglijk Marischaussee (the royal gendarmerie – the military police).