One man was murdered and another left seriously injured in the port city of Rotterdam on Thursday night. Police report that a knife-wielding suspect attacked a man in an underground car park, before moving up to one end of the landmark Erasmus bridge late on Thursday September 19th.
Witnesses reported the assailant shouted “Allahu akbar” (‘God is great’) and sought more victims at random. As bystanders prepared to defend themselves using chairs from a nearby restaurant, 32-year-old fitness instructor Reniël Renato David Litecia disarmed the attacker using two parts of a broken exercise stick.
Both the surviving victim and the suspect were admitted to hospital with serious injuries. Police are investigating. While a possible Islamist motive has been noted, police representative Wessel Stolle stated that “we look into all possible scenarios,” with the assailant yelling the telltale phrase forming “part of the investigation.”
At the time of writing, neither the victims nor the suspect have been identified, and the police are appealing for further witnesses to come forward.
Rotterdam’s earlier problems with Islamism include Hamas funding being piped through at least one local business and the arrest last year in the nearby village of Arkel of a Syrian national suspected of having been a security chief for the Islamic State terrorist organisation.
