Two people who were seriously injured in a stabbing incident at Amsterdam’s central station on Friday were US citizens, the American ambassador to the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra said, while Dutch police probed a possible terror link.
“We are aware that both victims were US citizens and have been in touch with them and their families,” Hoekstra said in a statement on Saturday.
Panic broke out at the Dutch capital’s main station shortly after mid-day Friday when the knive-wielding man stabbed two bystanders before he was shot and wounded by police. According to the cops, the attacker, a 19-year-old Afghan man with a German residency permit, was taken into custody shortly after the incident.
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“At this moment he is under police custody in hospital. He is being questioned about his motive,” Amsterdam police spokesman Frans Zuiderhoek told AFP news agency. “We are looking at all scenarios, also the worst scenario, which is terrorism.”
Another police spokesman, Rob van der Veen, said that “the police investigation is in full swing and we are looking at all angles”.
Details of the two Americans injured were not immediately known, although one was reported to be a young man.
Hoekstra said the US is ready to “assist as appropriate, with our main priority as always being the safety and well-being of US citizens in the country”.
The attack comes a day after an announcement by Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders that he was cancelling moves to stage a cartoon competition to caricature the Prophet Mohammad, a plan that had angered many Muslims.