After many hours, the police were able to end the hostage situation at Hamburg Airport. Photo: Jonas Walzberg/dpa
Hamburg (dpa) – Flights at Hamburg’s airport returned to normal schedule on Monday morning, hours after police managed to end a lengthy hostage stand-off with an armed man without bloodshed.
The airport said security measures will be overhauled and physical barriers strengthened after the armed man managed to drive his car onto the runway apron on Sunday, forcing a halt to air traffic.
“We will implement further structural measures to strengthen possible access points to the security area,” said an airport spokeswoman in Hamburg on Monday.
She said that the airport’s security team had already compared the airport’s security concept with current requirements on Sunday in light of the incident and were in touch with “the relevant authorities.”
The 35-year-old suspect, a Turkish national, is expected to make his initial appearance before a magistrate in Hamburg on Monday. He is accused of abducting his 4-year-old daughter from her mother’s apartment in the nearby town of Stade before fleeing toward the Hamburg airport.
He drove his car through a barrier and onto the runway apron, setting off a lengthy stand-off with German police. According to police, he fired shots from a gun and set off two incendiary devices.
He eventually handed over the girl and surrendered to police on on Sunday evening after 18 hours. No one was physically injured in the incident.
Police on Monday declined to say where the mother and child are currently and how the 4-year-old girl is doing for reasons of privacy.
Child welfare authorities in Stade said on Monday that the family was previously known to them but declined to provide further details for “reasons of social data protection and out of consideration for the welfare of the child,” an official spokesman said.
According to the public prosecutor’s office in Stade, the man had already been convicted of taking his daughter in the past and no longer had custody of the girl.
A magistrate on Monday will determine whether he will face criminal charges and remain in detention.
The armed man had raced onto the apron of Hamburg Airport with his 4-year-old daughter in the car.
Police had negotiated with the man for hours after he raced onto the apron of Hamburg airport on Saturday evening with his young daughter in the car, causing a complete halt of flights to and from Hamburg.
According to police, an armed man broke through a gate with his vehicle at around 8 pm (1900 GMT) on Saturday and drove onto the airport apron with a child passenger in the car. He had a gun and fired it twice into the air while also throwing “something resembling a petrol bomb” out of the window, according to the federal police.
Airport terminal buildings were evacuated, along with several aircraft, and the airport remained closed on Sunday.
The man’s car was parked under a Turkish Airlines aircraft on the tarmac. Police believe that a custody dispute may have be the reason for the hostage situation.
According to a police spokesman on Saturday evening, 3,200 people were affected by the evacuations.
In October authorities closed the same airport due to an attack threat on a flight from Tehran to Hamburg.
In July, climate activists from the Last Generation group paralysed the airport for hours. Flight operations had to be suspended for several hours for security reasons. Thousands of passengers, including many families with children, were affected.
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