Concern for a four-year-old girl and nerve-wracking negotiations with a hostage-taker at Hamburg airport: An armed man has been keeping the police on tenterhooks since Saturday evening. The 35-year-old broke through a barrier at the gate to the airport apron with his car and his daughter around 8 p.m. The police have been trying to end the hostage-taking bloodlessly for more than 16 hours, but were unsuccessful until midday on Sunday. Flight operations continue to be suspended in the north.
The 35-year-old shot into the air on Saturday evening and threw “some kind of Molotov cocktail” out of the car. Since then, the car has been parked next to a Turkish Airlines plane. According to the police, the hostage taker is still armed. “We currently have to assume that he is in possession of a live firearm and possibly also explosive devices of an unknown type,” the police wrote on X, formerly Twitter. The top priority is protecting the man’s four-year-old daughter.
Eye contact with four-year-old child in car
According to the police, this was probably preceded by a custody dispute with the mother. The girl, who was held hostage in the car by her father, appears to be physically unharmed. “We are currently assuming that the child is physically well. This is what we are told by the eye contact we have at the moment and the phone calls with the perpetrator, where the child can be heard in the background,” said police spokeswoman Sandra Levgrün on Sunday of the German Press Agency at the airport.
The child’s mother is waiting at the airport
The Hamburg police are still in contact with the man. Negotiations had been going on all night long. The language is spoken in Turkish, said police spokeswoman Levgrün. “We are relying on a negotiated solution here.” She assessed the fact that the discussions dragged on for so long as a positive thing: “That’s an absolutely good sign. He’s turned towards us. He wants to talk to us and we rate that as very positive.” However, there has been no breakthrough yet. “We talk, we talk, we talk – and try to find a peaceful solution that everyone can live with,” said Levgrün on Sunday morning. There is no demand for money from the man.
According to a spokesman, the hostage taker’s wife, who is said to have been in Stade near Hamburg, reported to the state police about possible child abduction. “We are currently assuming that a custody dispute is the background to the operation,” tweeted the Hamburg police.
“The mother naturally wants to get to her child as quickly as possible,” said the head of the DRK Hamburg crisis intervention team, Malte Stüben, to the dpa. The woman is in direct contact with the DRK and is at the airport. Because the hostage situation is still ongoing, direct contact cannot currently be guaranteed. “That means we endure the situation together with the mother and see what the mother needs now to make it somewhat bearable for her,” said Stüben. There is also a pediatrician who is supposed to take care of the four-year-old girl after she is taken hostage.
Thousands of people are affected
The airport remained largely closed on Sunday. The number of flights canceled due to the hostage-taking at Hamburg Airport continues to rise. According to information from the airport on Sunday morning, 126 flights have already been canceled between the actual start of operations at 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. Five arrivals were redirected to other airports. There are actually 286 flights planned for the entire day – 139 departures and 147 arrivals – with around 34,500 passengers. According to the airport, it is unclear how many of these can actually take place. Already on Saturday, 27 flights with around 3,200 passengers were affected.
Passengers describe fears
“Scary”, “creepy” – that’s how passengers who were taken out of their planes describe their impressions. A young woman who wanted to fly to Mallorca told dpa that she saw a fire and at first thought it would be quickly put out. Then she heard there was a shooting spree, and that was scary. In fact, the armed man had thrown incendiary bottles as he drove through the airport, which started fires on the apron.
Numerous passengers spent the night in an airport hotel. “We ultimately accommodated 250 people here,” said Frank Kohlstädt, head of the DRK station at the airport. Around 200 people also received hotel rooms. “At the moment the main problem is that they don’t know exactly what will happen next.” People were more excited than psychologically stressed.
Security incidents before
Hamburg airport had already been closed in October, but at that time because of a threat of attack on a plane from Tehran to Hamburg. In July, climate activists from the group Last Generation shut down Hamburg airport for hours. At that time there were calls for security to be strengthened. Despite the hostage-taking, Hamburg Airport sees no failures in securing the area. “Securing the site complies with all legal requirements and largely exceeds them,” an airport spokeswoman told the dpa.
