Two people are injured in knife attack at a Dutch shop: Manhunt underway after suspect flees
- City’s police force also tweeted that there was a fire in the shop on Wednesday
- Police are now appealing for witnesses, with no word on possible motives
- They are looking for a dark-skinned man in his thirties, wearing a black jacket
- The two people that were injured have been taken to hospital by ambulance
Two people have been injured in a knife attack at a Dutch shop in The Hague on Wednesday. A manhunt is underway to find the suspect, who fled the scene.
The city’s police force tweeted that there also was a fire at the store that was quickly extinguished. The two injured people were being taken to a hospital by ambulance.
One of the two victims is conscious, the police said.
The attack occurred at around noon in the city’s Grote Marktstraat, a shopping district in the centre of The Hague on the coast of the western Netherlands.
Police have launched an investigation and are appealing for witnesses, and a police helicopter was seen searching for the suspect.
Officials have said they are looking for a tall, dark-skinned man believed to be in his thirties, wearing a black jacket, tracksuit and grey shoes, according to Den Haag FM.
He is said to have fled towards ‘de Bijenkorf’, a Dutch department store.
Two people have been taken to hospital in ambulances after they were stabbed in The Hague, while the suspect fled the scene, leading the police on a manhunt. Pictured: Images from a local news station show emergency crew loading a person into an ambulance as police and firefighters work at the scene
Omroep West, a local Dutch radio station, reported that a local entrepreneur said the attack happened inside an Albert Heijn, a supermarket chain in the country.
‘People were running out of the supermarket. I heard someone would have thrown alcohol on the floor and lit it,’ said the owner of a clothes store next to the supermarket told the radio station.
‘I heard someone inside has stabbed people,’ he told the station, that reported the people who ran out of the supermarket took refuge in a restaurant across the street.
Pictured: The Hague’s Grote Marktstraat, a central shopping centre, where two people were stabbed inside a shop on Wednesday. Local news stations reported that the stabbing occurred inside an Albert Heijn supermarket in the centre
In videos from the scene shared by local news sources, a person could be seen being loaded into an ambulance by paramedics as firefighters stood in the background on a street closed off by police.
Further details weren’t immediately available and there was no word on a possible motive. It is also not currently known whether the stabbing and the fire are related.
Asked if there was any indication of terrorism, a police spokeswoman told AFP news agency there was ‘no motive at the moment’.
Police have launched an investigation and are appealing for witnesses, and a police helicopter was seen searching for the suspect in the air above the shopping district
Police were quoted by local media as saying there were no signs of terrorism in the incident, which saw part of the city centre sealed off by emergency services.
‘The report started with the emergency services with a stabbing incident and a fire in the supermarket on the Grote Markt. The fire has been put out,’ police said on Twitter, referring to the shopping street.
‘The two injured are being taken to hospital by ambulance.’
More to follow…