LAHORE MIRROR (Monitoring Desk)– A man has been arrested in Amsterdam following an hours-long hostage standoff at an Apple store.
Police say a 27-year-old gunman entered the store on Tuesday, taking one person hostage and demanding some €200m (£165m; $230m) in cryptocurrency.
The suspect was deliberately hit by a police car after running out of the building to chase the hostage, who had managed to escape.
He was taken to hospital under police custody with serious injuries.
An investigation has been launched, but police say they have not yet established a motive.
Officers were first called to the Apple store in the Dutch capital’s Leidseplein area at about 17:40 local time (16:40 GMT) on Tuesday, after the camouflage-wearing suspect entered the building. Dozens of people fled the shop, while four hid in a cupboard.
Images circulated on Dutch media appeared to show a man waving a firearm in one hand while holding a person in his other arm. The gunman sent photos to Amsterdam TV channel AT5 appearing to show explosives strapped to his body.
After nearly five hours, the hostage managed to escape when water was delivered to the store at the request of the gunman.
Amsterdam police chief Frank Paauw said the hostage – a Bulgarian man, not a Briton as previously reported – had played a “heroic role by forcing a breakthrough” in the stand-off.
“He acted in a split-second. Had he not done that, we could have been in for a long, nasty night,” he said.
Police have not publicly named the suspect but say he is a resident of Amsterdam with a criminal record.
They say an investigation has found that the suspect had explosives on his body, but that they were not ready to detonate.
SOURCE: BBC NEWS
