Suspect in Utrecht shooting arrested

The police chief of the Dutch city of Utrecht has said that the suspect in the deadly shooting on Monday, March 17, that left three people dead and nine injured, has been arrested.

The Utrecht police chief did not provide further details about the main suspect in the shooting.

But media reports say the suspect in the deadly attack is a 37-year-old Turkish-born man named Gökmen Tanis, who grew up in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He fled the scene of the shooting in a car.

According to Dutch media, this person is "mentally unstable" and is a convicted criminal, drug dealer, and sex offender with a serious criminal record.

There has been no official report yet on his motive for the shooting, but media coverage has raised the issue of personal "revenge" related to the sexual assault case by Gökmen Tanis.

A Dutch prosecutor also says the shooting may have been caused by a family dispute.

The Anatolia news agency quoted relatives of the attacker as saying that the attacker first shot one of his relatives on the tram and was met with intervention from other passengers.

Dutch domestic media had previously reported that anti-terrorism units had been dispatched to the area and that police were searching for the suspect or suspects.

The shooting reportedly took place on a tram in a residential area, and several helicopters have been dispatched to the scene to transport the injured to hospital. Several of the injured are reported to be in critical condition.

An eyewitness told reporters that he saw a woman lying on the ground at the scene of the shooting on the tram, with a fight going on around her and several men fleeing the scene.

Pieter-Jaap Albersberg, the country coordinator for counterterrorism operations in the Netherlands, told reporters that Dutch authorities did not rule out a "terrorist motive" in the act and that the state of emergency in the province of Utrecht, in the center of the Netherlands, has now been raised to level 5.

Mr. Albersberg also said that gunshots were heard "from several locations" in the city of Utrecht.

Following the shootings, Dutch political parties postponed their campaigns for the country's provincial elections, which were scheduled to begin on Wednesday.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says the situation in Utrecht is now "very worrying."

Utrecht city authorities have asked residents to stay indoors and lock their doors until further notice.

Students have also been asked to stay in schools and universities and not go out until further notice.

Dutch authorities have announced the name and age of the suspect, who they say was born in Turkey, and have released a picture of him, urging citizens to stay away from anyone with these characteristics and to report him.

German police have also announced that they have strengthened their checkpoints at the border between the two countries and are on the lookout to arrest the suspect or suspects.

Utrecht is the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, with a population of about 340,000. Murders and shootings are rare in the city, and in the Netherlands as a whole.

The Netherlands is a country that has remained somewhat isolated from major attacks in Europe in recent years, but it has a history of carrying out or "neutralizing" such attacks.

Last summer, a 19-year-old Afghan citizen living in Germany stabbed two American tourists in a busy tourist area of ​​Amsterdam; police shot and wounded him and then arrested him.

In September, Dutch security forces announced the arrest of seven people and the "neutralization" of a "major attack" on civilians, saying they had found a large shipment of explosives-making tools and materials.

Source: Radio Farda