They arrested one man after a four-hour security clampdown which lasted into the early hours yesterday. It remained unclear exactly what had triggered the alarm.
Advertisement
According to Lodewijk Hekking, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice and Security, another arrest was made at the Leiden Central rail station about 20-minutes away from the airport.
Explosives experts were called to the scene as a precaution and were checking the arrested man’s luggage, military police spokesman Alfred Ellwanger told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. The incident took place at around 9:45pm local time.
A hooded military police officer guards a part of Schiphol airport on Wednesday.
Bomb disposal units were dispatched to the evacuated airport just moments later, and using bomb detection robots the airport terminal was cleared and Amsterdam police began to allow travelers back into the busy Amsterdam airport. He said the arrest followed “a report of a suspicious situation”, but didn’t elaborate.
The bomb alert at Schiphol airport comes three weeks after the terrorist attacks at Brussels airport and a subway stop in the Belgian capital, which killed 32 people and injured over 340. He is still in police custody.
Schiphol is Europe’s fourth-largest airport, and welcomes some 55 million passengers through its gates every year.
No flight has been diverted and trains connecting the airport and the rest of the country circulated on schedule.
Advertisement
Security has been stepped up at Schiphol since the Brussels attacks.
