A hostage situation that shut down Hamburg airport is over, with a man arrested and his four-year-old daughter safe, German police said on Sunday afternoon.
The incident began about 18 hours earlier when a man drove his vehicle through the gates of the airport with his young daughter inside, authorities said.
Hamburg police tweeted: “The hostage situation is over. The suspect has left the car with his daughter … The child appears to be unharmed.”
Police also said “the man was arrested by the emergency services without resistance”.
Police spokeswoman Sandra Levgruen said officers are checking whether the suspect “still has any explosive devices on him or with him or whether they are still in the car”, German news agency dpa reported.
“We are currently assuming that he is unarmed, but he is still lying on the ground in the care of the police,” she said.
The airport in the northern German city had been closed to passengers and flights cancelled since Saturday night when the man, who was armed, broke through a gate with his vehicle and fired twice into the air with a weapon, according to dpa.
The man drove the vehicle just outside a terminal building and parked it under a plane.
Authorities said the man’s ex-wife had previously contacted them about a child abduction.
Police said the 35-year-old man had his daughter inside the car, after reportedly taking her from her mother by force in a custody battle.
A psychologist had been negotiating with the man for 18 hours.
Nobody was injured during the stand-off because the airport had been evacuated of all passengers, police said.
The mother of the abducted girl arrived at the airport on Sunday morning and had been receiving psychological support, dpa reported.
A paediatrician also arrived to look after the girl once the hostage-taking was over, the news agency said.
More than 100 flights were cancelled and several planes were re-routed.
Flights resumed on Sunday night, almost 24 hours after the hostage situation began.
Thousands of travellers were affected by the incident and hundreds were put up at hotels nearby.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here