One person is dead and another has been seriously injured after reportedly being attacked by a man with ‘two long knives’ in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam.
Local police were rushed to Erasmus Bridge, a landmark in the area, after reports of a knifeman on the lose on Thursday night.
There they found two victims – one who had been fatally injured.
The force also arrested the suspect, who was taken to hospital for treatment.
Police spokesman Wessel Stolle said officers were probing the stabbing.
One person is dead and another injured after allegedly being attacked by a knifeman in Rotterdam, Netherlands last night
The alleged attacker was said to have stabbed people at random
The horror occurred near Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge, local police said
Mr Stolle said there was no immediate word on a motive, but ‘we look into all possible scenarios’.
Dutch daily De Telegraaf cited witnesses at the scene who reported that a man had attacked people at random.
Onlookers clamed the knifeman was armed with two blades, and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’, the Arabic phrase meaning God is great, as he attacked people.
Mr Stolle said police at the scene also had heard that the man shouted the phrase, and that ‘it’s part of the investigation’.
A sports instructor, Reniel Renato David Litecia, said he hit the attacker with two sticks after seeing him attack somebody and managed to take the knives and throw them away.
He said he initially thought it was a fight, ‘but when I started running in that direction I saw that it wasn’t a fight’.
The instructor continued: ‘It was a man with two long knives who was stabbing another young guy and when I started shouting he turned around and started approaching everyone who was around him.’
Another police spokesperson, Kristel Arntz, said the knifeman is believed to have attacked one person in an underground car park.
She said a second victim was thought to have been attached near a busy terrace at one end of the bridge that spans the New Maas river, which that runs through Rotterdam.
Ms Arntz also said it was too early in the investigation to establish a motive.
She said: ‘We have arrested a suspect, we are going to question him.
‘We will look at all the witness statements and then we will look at what the possible motive was.
The identities of the victims and suspect were not immediately clear.