Dutch police seek witnesses to stabbing as suspect taken into custody

Police in Rotterdam are appealing for witnesses to a knife attack in which one person was killed and another seriously wounded.

A 32-year-old Rotterdam native was killed, and a 33-year-old Swiss citizen was seriously wounded in the stabbing near the landmark Erasmus Bridge, police said in a statement.

A suspect was arrested in the Dutch port city on Thursday night after being overpowered by members of the public and police.

There was no immediate word on the motive for the attack, but police said Thursday night that witnesses reported the attacker shouting "Allahu akbar", Arabic for "God is great".

"It's part of the investigation," police spokesman Wessel Stolle said on Wednesday night.

The suspect is a 22-year-old man from the central Dutch city of Amersfoort who reportedly attacked his victims with two large knives. In line with domestic privacy guidelines, police have not released the identities of the suspect or the victims of the stabbing.

Still too early to establish a motive

A sports instructor, Reniël Renato David Litecia, said that he hit the attacker with two sticks after seeing him attack somebody and managed to take the knives and throw them away.

He told the Associated Press that he initially thought it was a fight, "but when I started running in that direction, I saw that it wasn't a fight."

"It was a man with two long knives who was stabbing another young guy and when I started shouting he turned around and started approaching everyone who was around him."

Another police spokesperson, Kristel Arntz, said the assailant is believed to have attacked one person in an underground car park a second victim at one end of the bridge over the New Maas river.

Arntz also said that it was too early to establish a motive.