EDE, Netherlands — Heavily armed police cordoned off part of a Dutch town on Saturday, saying that multiple people were being held hostage in a building there.
Police spokesman Simon Klok told The Associated Press people were being held hostage in the town of Ede but he declined to give more details of the incident or say how many people were involved.
Police said in a message on X, formerly Twitter, that “at the moment there is no indication of a terrorist motive.”
Earlier, officers evacuated 150 homes near a central square, saying that there was a person in the area “who could be a danger to themself or others.”
Images from the scene in Ede, a rural market town 85 kilometers (53 miles) southeast of Amsterdam, showed police and firefighters on the streets in a cordoned-off area.
The municipality said that all shops in the center of Ede would remain closed.
Dutch transport officials refuted claims on social media that protesters “took over the loudspeaker” at the main train station of The Hague to criticise the government of the Netherlands for “contributing to a genocide” in Gaza. The misleading posts shared footage of a protest in the station, which featured an audio of the purported hijacked announcement. But authorities told AFP the announcement system in the station in The Hague was automatic and did not include a microphone that could be taken over by protesters.
The video was shared on Facebook by a Malaysia-based user on February 12, 2024. Part of its caption said: “I hope I’m distantly related to this legend. She took over the loudspeaker at The Hague’s central train station.”
The 46-second video showed a banner with the Palestinian flag hung inside the Centraal train station in The Hague.
Dutch-language text written on the banner said: “The Hague, capital of genocidal politics, the Netherlands finances, Israel bombs”. Flyers criticising the Dutch government for delivering weapons to Israel were also seen scattered in the station.
A woman’s voice in the style of a public announcement could be heard in the clip saying: “Dear travellers, we are sorry to inform you that you are involved in genocide.”
“The Dutch government is using your voice and your taxpayer money to give political, financial and military support to Israel in its campaign to destroy Gaza and its people. The Netherlands refused to demand a ceasefire,” it added.
“Your Dutch government is doing everything possible to protect Israel from sanctions at the United Nations.”
Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on March 25, 2024
Similar posts claiming pro-Palestinian protesters took over the speaker system at the train station in The Hague racked up more than 500,000 views on TikTok here and here. The misleading claim was also shared repeatedly on Instagram and YouTube.
The posts surfaced as Israel pressed on with its intense bombardment of Gaza despite international pressure for an immediate ceasefire. The war broke out following an unprecedented attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 which resulted in about 1,160 deaths, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign killed at least 32,500 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Famine was looming in the besieged Palestinian territory, international aid agencies warned.
AFP could not independently verify when the footage shared in the posts was taken. However, multiple Dutch officials refuted the claim that protesters were able to take over the public announcement system at the train station.
‘No microphone’
Several pro-Palestinian protests were staged in the station, according to multiple news reports here, here and here. But there were no news reports as of March 29 which said protesters took over the public announcement system (archived links here, here and here).
According to Arno Leblanc, a spokesman for the main Dutch railways operator NS, the announcements at the train station were “automatic”. “There is no microphone” that could be taken over, he said on March 26 in response to the posts.
A spokesman for the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, which is responsible for transport, separately told AFP on March 7: “The public announcement system wasn’t taken over by the protesters. The voice in the video is an imitation of a public announcement by the Dutch Railways.”
The spokesman said the protest shown in the clip was filmed in Centraal station in The Hague but it was not immediately clear which day it happened.
The station seen in the clip corresponds to images of The Hague’s Centraal station geotagged on Google Maps (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the station seen in the misleading posts (left) and the image from Google Maps (right) with similar elements highlighted by AFP:
Falsely shared clip (left) and geotagged photo of Den Haag Centraal station on Google Maps (right), with similarities marked by AFP
AFP previously debunked misinformation swirled in Malaysia related to the Israel-Hamas war here, here and here.
Spanish government researchers said Sunday they had identified 357 foreign fighters who went missing during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the conflict that foreshadowed World War II.
Researchers confirmed the names of 212 fighters from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, according to a statement from the government Sunday. Some 102 are of German origin, 70 Austrian and 40 Dutch. It gave no information on how many people of other nationalities had been identified.
The identified combatants fought within the International Brigades, military units set up by the Communist International to fight against General Francisco Franco’s fascist forces. Some 40,000 foreign men and women joined up as volunteers, fighting alongside the forces of the democratic Second Spanish Republic and against the rise of fascism in Europe in late 1930s.
The findings are based on a year of research in records held in documentary archives in Spain and Russia. Researchers combed through the daily lists of casualties and missing soldiers compiled by officers in the International Brigades.
The names of private soldiers were frequently omitted from the lists, making the research process more difficult. These lists are held in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, in Moscow. Researchers also dipped into the main archives on the Spanish Civil War located in Spain.
By cross-referencing documents, researchers were also able to identify the likely area where the soldiers died or were badly wounded. It is an important step toward locating their remains inside mass graves scattered across the country.
This research provides “very valuable information that gives us the opportunity to contact the families of the missing combatants and, in the future, to intervene in the mass graves that have been located,” said Alfons Aragoneses, head of the project.
All those identified were part of the Thälmann Brigade, a Communist unit made up largely of anti-Nazi Germans. The battalion was active on the Ebro River front in northeastern Spain between March and September 1938, the site of the longest and deadliest battle of the war.
The research is ongoing and it is funded by Catalan regional government, with the aim of contributing to the country’s historical memory. The second phase of the project will try to identify missing militiamen from Great Britain, Ireland, Canada and the United States. The final step would require opening the graves in search of bodies.
Historians estimate nearly 10,000 foreign volunteers died in combat on Spanish soil during the war. How many are still unidentified, buried inside graves, remains unknown.
The Spanish Civil War served as a testing ground for Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy prior to World War II. This triggered an international outcry to try to save the Republic’s democratic government, which eventually succumbed to Franco in 1939.
