AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, April 13 (UPI) — Amsterdam Airport Schiphol was partially evacuated late Tuesday after a “suspicious” man was arrested and bomb technicians were called to sweep the facility, authorities said.
Details of the bomb scare were not immediately disclosed, but a police spokesman said it began with a phone call Tuesday night at the Netherlands’ largest airport.
“We got a call from someone at the airport saying there is a suspicious man. He was arrested,” Dutch police spokesman Alfred Ellwanger said.
The suspicious person was arrested around 9:40 p.m. local time, and a bomb unit deployed a robot to inspect a suspicious package reported by witnesses.
The nearby Schiphol Sheraton hotel was also evacuated, some news media reported.
Scenes of the massive police presence were captured by eyewitness photos and videos and shared on various online social channels.
Air traffic was not disrupted by the bomb scare, the airport said via Twitter on Tuesday night. Nearly three hours later, the airport tweeted that all areas of the facility had been reopened.
“Tomorrow, flights will run as usual. Thank you all for your patience and understanding tonight,” Schiphol said in the tweet.
It wasn’t immediately known whether police and the bomb disposal unit found any explosives in the man’s possession.
Police made another arrest at the Leiden Central rail station, about 20-minutes away from the airport, Lodewijk Hekking, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice and Security, said.
It wasn’t initially known whether there is any connection between the arrested persons.
Tuesday’s bomb scare came at a time when many European airports are on a heightened security alert following coordinated terrorist attacks on Belgium’s Zaventem International Airport in Brussels, which killed 32 people on March 22.
