A man who took a child hostage for 17 hours has been arrested at a major airport in Germany after negotiating with the police overnight and throughout this morning.
Hamburg Airport in southern Germany was closed to passengers and flights were suspended until further notice after a vehicle broke through security and fired twice into the air last night. Federal police said an armed man rammed through a gate at Hamburg Airport and entered the premises at 8.12pm local time, parking the car next to a fully occupied Turkish Airlines passenger plane.
Officers added that before the man was noticed by security forces at the airport, his wife had alerted them about a possible child abduction. Several local German media reported that the man had a child inside his car, which was described by the German tabloid newspaper Bild as an Audi without a licence plate.
According to the German newspaper, the man is understood to be a Turkish national. The child in his car was his four-year-old daughter and appeared unharmed when the hostage situation ended this afternoon, Hamburg Police said.
Bild reported that the man parked the car directly under a plane and shot in the air twice. He also allegedly threw two burning bottles out of the car, which were described by Mr Gerbert as "a kind of Molotov cocktails". According to Bild, the 35-year-old man wants to be flown to Turkey with the child.
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This morning, the police said they had been negotiating with the father all night and that the situation was still the same. It said in a statement at 6.40am: "The operation continues. Our negotiating group has contact with the person inthe car. The situation remains static."
