Traffic at Hamburg Airport in northern Germany came to a standstill on Saturday evening, November 4th, due to a major police operation in connection with the suspected kidnapping of a child in connection with a custody dispute.
Around 8 p.m., an armed man drove a car through an airport gate and onto the tarmac, shooting twice in the air and throwing two lit bottles from the cabin, a door message said. – Police report. According to police, at least two people, including a child, were in the vehicle.
The driver’s wife had previously informed the authorities about the abduction of their child, he added. In the evening, the police said they assumed that “a dispute over the custody of a child was the origin of this action.”
Psychologists on site
“We have a large contingent of emergency services on site. We currently prefer a static situation of [prise] “Hostage,” said the Hamburg police on his X account (ex-Twitter). “We are in the process of evacuating all aircraft from Hamburg Airport that still have passengers on them. The terminals have already been evacuated,” she added.
Psychologists and agents specializing in negotiation were at the scene, police said, adding that they were still in contact with the person in the vehicle as of 2 a.m.
At the same time, the airport published a notice on its website saying that due to police intervention, neither landing nor takeoff was possible. In total, there were “twenty-seven flight movements – six take-offs and twenty-one landings – for around 3,200 passengers,” an airport spokesman told the German Bild newspaper.