Car explodes before catching fire in Amsterdam as man walks around engulfed in flames

Amsterdam stabbing: Mark White reacts as several people injured after broad daylight knife attack in city centre
GB News
George Bunn

By George Bunn


Published: 03/04/2025

- 13:32

Updated: 03/04/2025

- 16:15

The area in the city's Dam Square remains cordoned off

A car has exploded in central Amsterdam - with its driver suspected of having caused the fire on purpose.

Dam Square in the centre of the Dutch capital was closed to pedestrians and traffic while emergency services attended the scene near the city's war memorial.


It comes a week after a mass stabbing close to the square in which five people were attacked. Four of them remain in hospital.

A man, believed to be the driver, was spotted on fire near the vehicle.

Amsterdam car explosion

A car was set on fire near the city's War Memorial

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Officers from the city's police force said the driver appears to have started the fire deliberately and that he was injured in the blaze.

Police said camera footage had shown that the fire was caused by an explosion, which happened among a crowd of people on the busy square.

Images on social media show a man with burning clothes close to a small red car with flames lashing out the windows on the Dam Square.

Police are seen extinguishing the flames on the visibly wounded man before taking him into custody.

Officers said it had sealed off large parts of the square as explosives experts were investigating the car.

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\u200bFootage showed police extinguishing a man

Footage showed police extinguishing a man

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The Dutch military’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Service, or EODD, was sent to the busy square.

A spokesman said: "The Dam will therefore remain largely closed off for the time being."

An employee of Peek & Cloppenburg, a shop in the square, suspects that it was a suicide attack. She told De Telegraaf that a car drove onto the city's war memorial before smoke emerged from the vehicle.

She added: "Then he got out of the car, he was already completely on fire... He had done this himself. You don't get such a big fire from a cigarette falling into the car. It was really very intense to see."

Another eyewitness added: "It sounded like an implosion, not a firework bang. A kind of underwater bang. Unable to place, but enough to scare. Very dull. Everyone started running, including me."

A shop security guard who was at the scene said: "He set himself on fire. I saw him get out of the car on fire. His pants were hanging around his ankles.

"He was stumbling around in his underpants. The fire brigade extinguished him. He was then taken away in an ambulance."