2 deadly incidents during New Year's Eve in Netherlands

The Netherlands started 2016 with a festive New Year's Eve, but also with some major incidents resulting in two deaths.

In Veenendaal in the province of Utrecht one person died due to a fire in a flat and in the city of Haarlem, in the province of North Holland, one person was killed and several were injured during a stabbing incident, local police reported.

At various places rescue workers were harassed. For instance, in Rotterdam fire brigade and ambulance workers were attacked with fireworks at several places, Rotterdam police stated.

As usual during New Year's Eve the emergency services were busy with fires and injuries due to fireworks. The hotline for fireworks offenses received over 82,000 messages of fireworks nuisance.

Around 10,000 people attended the national celebration at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. The event occurred without major incidents. The authorities in Amsterdam had imposed extra security measures due to terrorist threat concerns, although mayor Eberhard van der Laan had said there was no specific threat.

The fireworks show in Amsterdam had a number of references to Europe and the flags of the countries of the Union were hoisted, to emphasize on the Dutch presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2016.

Source: XINHUA