Two French tourists, aged 22 and 27, suffered stab wounds on their hands in Amsterdam’s famous red-light district on Sunday night, police said.
“The suspect fled. We couldn’t find him,” a police spokesman told AFP. No information was given on the suspect’s motive, but the two victims intend to press charges, the spokesman said.
The knife attack took place around 3:00 a.m. local time (01:00 GMT) on the Oudekerksplein (old church square in French, in the heart of the red-light district), said police, who said they had called a witness. Two people were injured on their hands. One of the two was treated at the scene and the other was transferred to the hospital,” the spokesman said.
crime on the rise
Located in the heart of the city, just a stone’s throw from Central Station, the so-called Wallen district (red light district) is one of Amsterdam’s biggest tourist attractions. If it had taken the full brunt of the health crisis, it was particularly crowded this Easter weekend, daily Het Parool reported, with many people there at the time of the events.
Due to a rise in local crime and crowds of young party tourists, the area was once dubbed the “square mile of squalor” by police.
To calm the riots and curb crime, local authorities even considered relocating the prostitutes to a suburban location to preserve this historic district, but most workers there called for less drastic measures.