A spokeswoman for Hamburg Airport said on Saturday evening that the airport terminal buildings in the city of Hamburg in northern Germany were evacuated, along with several aircraft, after an armed man accompanied by a child in a car stormed into the airport’s aircraft apron.
A Hamburg police spokesman said: “We currently assume that we are facing a hostage situation.”
The German Federal Police reported that an armed man stormed the gate with his car at around eight in the evening (1900 GMT) and stormed the airport square.
He was carrying a pistol and fired it twice in the air, according to German Federal Police spokesman Thomas Gerbert.
Since then, it has been confirmed that there was one child in the car with the man.
It remains unclear whether there was a second child in the car, as initially thought.
According to the spokesman, the man’s wife had previously notified the Hamburg State Police about the possibility of the man kidnapping a child. Gerbert continued that there was a heavy presence of state and federal police at the scene, and that they were present near the car, shared with the Evidence and Control Unit of the Federal Police.
The airport’s website said on Saturday evening: “Due to federal police action, it is not possible for aircraft to take off and land at the present time.” The airport spokeswoman said that the airport is officially closed from 24:08 PM on Saturday (1924 GMT) until the end of operations at 00:11 PM (2200 GMT).
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