Dutch police arrest Utrecht shooting suspect

Utrecht, Netherlands: Dutch police on Monday arrested the suspect in a shooting on a tram in the city of Utrecht in which three people were killed, a police chief said.

"We have just been informed that the suspect has been arrested," Utrecht police chief Rob van Bree told a news conference.

Police had earlier said they were searching for Turkish-born suspect Gokmen Tanis, 37, and issued a picture of him.

The head of the Dutch national counter-terrorism service, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, confirmed "the arrest of the main suspect for the shooting".

He said authorities had lowered the threat level in Utrecht from the maximum level five as a result of the arrest.

Three people were killed and nine injured in a shooting in the Dutch city of Utrecht, the mayor said Monday, adding that authorities were working on the basis of it being a terrorist attack.

"At this stage, we can confirm three deaths and nine wounded, three of them seriously," Utrecht Mayor Jan van Zanen said in a video statement on Twitter.

"We are working on the principle that it was a terrorist attack," he added.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte had earlier said there were "possible deaths" and that a terrorist motive was "not excluded".

Rutte told a brief press conference in The Hague with the country´s justice minister that there were "several wounded and possible deaths" in the incident.