Dutch police arrested a man on Saturday after he left a nightclub where he was holding hostages, apparently bringing a peaceful end to a tense standoff that lasted for hours.
“The last hostage has just been released. One person has been arrested. We cannot provide further information at this time,” police said in a post on Twitter previously.
The man left the club and was ordered by armed police to kneel with his hands on his head. He was then handcuffed before being taken to a waiting police car, according to the Associated Press.
Earlier, the Dutch police said in a statement that the holding of hostages in a nightclub in the town of Edde in the east of the country was still continuing on Saturday, and that three of them had been released.
Media reports said that a gunman had taken several people hostage earlier and threatened to detonate a bomb.
It was not clear how many hostages were still being held after reporters saw three workers fleeing the scene of the incident, raising their hands above their heads, according to Reuters.
Police reported that there was no indication that the hostage-taking was motivated by terrorism.
The police said in a statement posted on social media that they had sent several units of special police forces to the site, a building in the city centre. She added that 150 homes were evacuated and residents were asked to stay away from the area.
The national newspaper De Telegraaf quoted several unidentified sources as saying that a man in possession of weapons and explosives had taken hostages in the Petticoat nightclub.
A correspondent for the “NOS” network said that there was a remote-controlled robot at the scene of the accident, in addition to bomb dismantling units and police officers wearing protective clothing.
Agence France-Presse quoted the mayor of Ede, Rene Verhulst, as saying, “It is a terrible situation for all these people. I feel concern and solidarity with them and their loved ones. I hope that the issue will now be resolved quickly and safely.”
It is not yet clear how many people were initially detained, but local media reported between four or five.
It is also not yet clear whether there are still hostages in the café that young people frequent and where a party was held until the early hours of Saturday.
Several local media outlets reported that a “disoriented” man entered the café and made threats.
Last year, a 27-year-old man with two pistols took a number of hostages at an Apple store in Amsterdam, in an operation that lasted five hours.
The operation ended when a police car hit the suspect while he was chasing the last hostage who tried to escape from the store. He later died in hospital from his injuries.
The Netherlands witnessed a series of terrorist attacks and plots, but not on the scale of those that occurred in other European countries such as France or Britain.
In 2019, a shooting that occurred on a tram in Utrecht shook the country, resulting in four deaths.
In the last serious incident linked to terrorism, anti-Islam Dutch director Theo van Gogh was shot and stabbed in 2004 in Amsterdam by a man linked to a Dutch terrorist network.
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