Dutch police seek witnesses to knife attack in Rotterdam that left one dead and another seriously injured

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch police appealed for witnesses Friday as they investigated a stabbing attack that killed one man and seriously injured another in the port city of Rotterdam.

A suspect was arrested after being overpowered by citizens and police officers on Thursday night. The motive for the attack is not yet known, but police said Thursday night that witnesses reported the attacker shouting “Allahu akbar,” the Arabic phrase for “God is great.”

“This is part of the investigation,” police spokesman Wessel Stolle said Wednesday evening.

A 32-year-old man from Rotterdam was killed and a 33-year-old Swiss man was seriously injured in a knife attack near the Erasmus Bridge, police said in a statement. The suspect is a 22-year-old man from the central Dutch city of Amersfoort who allegedly attacked his victims with two large knives.

Police have not released the identities of the suspect or the victims of the stabbing, in line with Dutch privacy guidelines.

A sports instructor, Reniël Renato David Litecia, said he hit the attacker with two sticks after seeing him attack someone and managed to grab the knives and throw them away.

He initially thought it was a fight, but “when I started running in that direction, I saw it wasn’t a fight. It was a man with two long knives stabbing another young man and when I started screaming, he turned around and started approaching everyone around him.”

Another police spokeswoman, Kristel Arntz, said the attacker allegedly attacked one person in an underground car park and then a second victim near a busy terrace near one end of the bridge over the Nieuwe Maas river, which runs through Rotterdam.

Arntz also said it was too early in the investigation to establish a motive.

“We have arrested a suspect, we are going to question him. We are going to examine all the testimonies and then we will see what the possible motive was,” she said.