Beach party ends in deadly shooting
Shootings at a Dutch beach rave on Saturday left one 19-year-old dead and six others wounded. Some are saying only the police fired shots.
Klaas Rohde, one of the organisers of Saturday's edition of the 'Sunset Grooves' dance party in Hoek van Holland, a North Sea beach town within the Rotterdam city limits, said the incident was "awful" and "un-Dutch".
One 19-year-old from Rotterdam was killed and six people aged 18 to 23 were wounded. Police said a group of people turned against them and warning shots were fired. They also aimed and shot one person but said his life was not in danger. No one has been arrested for the shooting.
No arrests were made during or after the deadly shooting in Hoek van Holland
on Saturday. The 100 police officers present at the dance party were unable
to identify the shooters. "It was hard because it was very dark",
a spokesperson for the public prosecutor said. No arrests were made even
after dozens of witnesses came forward.
Some are saying that only the police fired shots after people started
fighting. The spokesperson said this was "very premature" as not
all the bullets have been found yet. The technical investigation will take
at least until Wednesday.
Mayor pissed off'
"The beach turned into a war zone," said a father and son who run a
nearby beach club and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of
reprisal. They barricaded themselves inside the club house together with
eighty other people when the shooting started just before midnight. "We
kept dead quiet while war broke out all around us," they said. "The
police panicked as they went around with drawn weapons and searchlights
looking for the enemy. Sixteen, seventeen year old girls were running into
the dunes with bloody faces."
Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb has promised a thorough investigation into what he called "a worrying social phenomenon that is occuring all over the Netherlands".
"Young people who are drunk and on drugs turned against the police and emergency workers. I am really pissed off," Aboutaleb said.
Free party
The shooting took place in the same weekend as one of the Netherlands' biggest, and most expensive, music festivals, Lowlands, and some are saying that the fact that Sunset Grooves was a free party is what attracted troublemakers.
The versions of what took place on the beach and in the nearby dunes differ. Whereas some pointed the finger at football hooligans, others claimed that groups of ethnic minorities from Suriname, the Antilles and Morocco clashed just before the shooting started
The events organisation reported 28.000 visitors, but a police union said that there may have been as much as 40,000 to 50,000 people.