Two bystanders who were seriously injured in a knife attack at Amsterdam's Central Station are US citizens, the US ambassador said Saturday.
"We are aware that both victims were US citizens and have been in touch with them and their families," Pete Hoekstra said in a statement.
Police shot and wounded a 19-year-old Afghan man with a German residency permit. He stabbed the two people at the Dutch capital's busy station in the city centre on Friday.
"We are seriously taking into account that there was a terrorist motive," Amsterdam police spokesman Frans Zuiderhoek told AFP.
Earlier witnesses described scenes of panic as gunshots rang out and thousands of commuters and tourists were evacuated from the rail terminus shortly after midday on Friday.
"A man in the west side tunnel of Amsterdam Central Station stabbed two other people and directly after that he was shot by the police," another police spokesman Rob van der Veen said, adding terrorism was not being ruled out by investigators.
"The two people are very badly injured, and they were brought to the hospital," he said.
"We are looking at all scenarios, also the worst scenario, which is terrorism."
One witness said he saw a young man "stumble" into his flower shop at the station with a bleeding wound to his hand.
"Shortly afterwards I heard some shots and I know something has gone badly wrong," Richard Snelders told the ANP news agency. A while later he saw another man lying on the ground nearby, he said.
"The first thing that comes up in your mind is that it's a terror attack. After all, you are at Amsterdam Central Station. There was a lot of panic," Snelders said.
Police quickly arrived at the scene with video images showing police ordering the suspect in English to "stay down" after he had been shot.
Images posted on social media showed security guards ushering passengers towards exits and paramedics arriving at the scene with stretchers.
Police spokesman Zuiderhoek said the knifeman's condition was not life-threatening, but that he had been shot in the lower body.
"At this moment he is under police custody in hospital. He is being questioned about his motive," Zuiderhoek added.
Dutch police were also in close contact with their German counterparts in regards to the suspect's background, he added.
Two platforms at the station - located in the Dutch capital's historic canal-ringed city centre - had been evacuated and closed off to passengers, police said, and were reopened for rail traffic two hours later.
A special police department opened a routine probe into why police shot the man.
The Netherlands has so far been spared from the slew of terror attacks which have rocked its closest European neighbours in the past few years.
But amid a number of scares and reports that people linked to some of those attacks may have crossed briefly into the country, top Dutch security and intelligence officials have stressed that the threat level is substantial.
Police declined to speculate on the reasons for Friday's incident, but the Afghan Taliban in a statement Thursday called for attacks on Dutch troops following plans by Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders to stage a Prophet Mohammed cartoon competition in the Dutch parliament.
Wilders, who received several death threats has since cancelled the competition which has angered Muslims and sparked protests, saying he wanted to "avoid the risk of making people victims of Islamist violence".
Around 250,000 people travel through Central Station every day, according to statistics provided by the Amsterdam.info travel guide.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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