Dutch police arrested a suspect in the stabbing of three teenagers in a busy shopping street in The Hague, the city’s police force said.
“Following the stabbing incident in Grote Marktstraat, a 35-year-old man has just been arrested in the centre of The Hague. The man has no fixed place of residence,” police said on Twitter on Saturday.
“He will be transferred to a police station where he will be questioned.”
The three people injured, two 15-year-old girls and a 13-year-old boy, were all discharged from hospital late on Friday.
The attack caused panic in The Hague as it happened just hours after a man stabbed two people to death in London.
Police initially said they were looking for a man, about 45 to 50 years old, in a grey jogging suit.
But in a later update police spokeswoman Marije Kuiper said they did not yet have a description of the suspect, adding the initial statement was wrong.
Images on social media showed shoppers running in panic away from the scene on a nighttime retail street lit by Christmas fairy lights.
“I saw two girls screaming and running away. A man fled. He jumped very athletically over benches to get away. He looked like a cheetah,” one witness told broadcaster NOS.
“People were trying to get away but that didn’t work. I was shocked.”
A similar stabbing occurred in Amsterdam a year ago when two US citizens were wounded in a knife attack that prosecutors say had a “terrorist motive”.
Credit: NAN