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AMSTERDAM/THE HAGUE: Several people have been taken hostage in a town in central Netherlands on Saturday (Mar 29), according to police, with houses evacuated and the town centre closed down.
Three hostages have since been released but the incident is still ongoing, the police said in a statement on X.
It is not known how many people are being held but local media reported around four or five people are involved.
Several special police units had been deployed to the scene, a building in the centre of town, police said in a statement posted on social media.
They added that 150 homes had been evacuated and the public was asked to stay away from the area.
People were taken hostage at the local Petticoat bar early on Saturday morning by a man with weapons and explosives, national newspaper de Telegraaf reported, citing several anonymous sources.
“We see there are many questions about the motive. At this time, there is no indication of a terrorist motive,” police said.
The Netherlands has seen a series of terror attacks and plots but not on the scale of other European countries, such as France or Britain.
In 2019, the country was stunned by a shooting spree on a tram in the city of Utrecht that claimed four lives.
A Turkish-born man identified as Gokmen Tanis later admitted a terror motive for the rampage that virtually shut down the country’s fourth-biggest city.
Also in 2019, Dutch police charged two suspected jihadists with planning a terror attack using suicide bombs and car bombs. Authorities said an attack was planned that year.
A young Afghan man identified only as “Jawed S.” stabbed two American tourists at Amsterdam Central Station in 2018, later telling judges he wanted “to protect the Prophet Mohammed”.
The assault came a day after far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders announced he was cancelling a plan to stage a cartoon competition to caricature the Prophet Mohammed.
At the time, Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid urged Muslims to attack Dutch troops after Wilders’ “hostile act by this country (the Netherlands) against all Muslims”.
In the most serious incident involving a terror attack, outspoken Dutch anti-Islam film director Theo van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death in 2004 in Amsterdam by a man with ties to a Dutch Islamist terror network.
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