The hostage drama in Hamburg

The police: Custody dispute behind the hostage drama  

Police in Germany say a custody dispute is likely behind the hostage situation still ongoing at Hamburg airport today. The BBC writes.  

 

According to Sweden's Radio Ekot, the man must have picked up his four-year-old daughter at his ex-girlfriend's house shortly before he left for the airport, where on Saturday evening he drove through a fence and thus got onto the runway.  

 

According to the police, the four-year-old should be fine under the circumstances. 

 

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The police in contact with the man: "Good sign" 

On Sunday morning, the police are in contact with the man who drove a car onto the runway at Hamburg Airport on Saturday evening, Die Zeit reports.  

 

The man has his 4-year-old daughter in the car, and the incident is described as an ongoing hostage situation. The fact that the police made contact with the man relatively quickly is described as a "good sign" by police officers that Die Zeit spoke to. A police psychologist must be involved in the conversation.  

 

The man, believed to be in his 35s, forced the gates to the runway with his car at around 7pm on Saturday night. He also allegedly fired a weapon into the air and threw incendiary bombs onto the runway, but no one was reportedly injured.  

 

All flights have been canceled and passengers on planes already on the runway when the man drove onto it have been evacuated by heavily armed police. 

 

- We saw armed police running across the runway towards our plane, so we understood that something was happening, says 32-year-old Alina Tuider, who was about to fly home to Vienna, to the New York Times.