Dutch police are looking for witnesses to a stabbing in Rotterdam in which one person was killed and another seriously injured

THE HAGUE – Dutch police on Friday appealed for witnesses as part of their investigation into a stabbing in the port city of Rotterdam in which one man was killed and another seriously injured.

A suspect was arrested after he was overpowered by citizens and police on Thursday evening. There was no immediate information about the motive for the attack, but police said Thursday evening that witnesses reported the attacker shouting “Allahu akbar,” the Arabic phrase meaning “God is great.”

“It is part of the investigation,” said police spokesman Wessel Stolle on Wednesday evening.

A 32-year-old man from Rotterdam was killed and a 33-year-old man from Switzerland was seriously injured in the knife attack near the famous Erasmus Bridge, police said in a statement. The suspect is a 22-year-old man from the central Dutch city of Amersfoort who reportedly attacked his victims with two large knives.

For privacy reasons, police did not disclose the identity of the suspect or the victims of the stabbing.

A physical education teacher, Reniël Renato David Litecia, said he hit the attacker with two sticks after seeing him attack someone and managed to take the knives from him and throw them away.

He said he initially thought it was a fight, “but when I ran in that direction I saw it wasn’t a fight. There was a man with two long knives stabbing another young man, and when I started screaming he turned around and started walking towards everyone standing around him.”

Another police spokeswoman, Kristel Arntz, said the attacker is believed to have attacked one person in an underground car park and then a second victim near a busy terrace at the end of the bridge over the New Maas, which flows through Rotterdam.

Arntz also said it was too early in the investigation to determine a motive.

“We have arrested a suspect and will be questioning him. We will look at all witness statements and then examine what the possible motive was,” she said.