Dutch police open fire on man with knife at Schiphol airport

AMSTERDAM AIRPORT SCHIPHOL, Netherlands: Dutch military police shot and wounded a man armed with a knife, who burst into their office at Schiphol airport, in an incident which triggered panic in the busy Amsterdam air hub.

“This afternoon a man came into the office of the Marechaussee (military police) here at Schiphol and he threatened my colleagues with a knife,” a spokesman for the police, Dennis Muller, told AFP.

“After he threatened them, my colleagues took out their guns and shot him in his leg,” Muller said, adding the man had been taken to hospital for treatment.

The police said in a tweet later that the suspect was a 29-year-old man from The Hague, who was “known to the Marechaussee in connection with earlier violent incidents at Schiphol.”

But the shooting triggered panic on the airport’s vast plaza, which is criss-crossed by thousands of people every day making their way to and from the departures and arrivals halls.

A worker at a fast food shop told AFP she saw a man ‘waving a knife around’ before hearing a single shot.

“It was a scary thing to see him waving his knife around,” said the worker, who refused to be identified.

Schiphol airport is one of Europe’s top five busiest air hubs, handling a record 63.6 million passengers in 2016, up from 58 million in 2015.

“He seemed to be a confused person,” Muller said, adding “our investigators are on the scene to try and determine exactly what his motives were.”

The cavernous plaza, where trains arrive underground and where people can also stop to shop or eat in a large commercial area, was briefly evacuated.

But the airport tweeted later that the plaza was “reopened to the public again although a small part remained closed.

“Air traffic is experiencing no further consequences,” it added.

The police office and the Starbucks coffee shop next door were cordoned off with red-andwhite tape, and green-and-white screens guarded by heavily armed military police were erected to shield the area from curious onlookers. — AFP