Mostly peaceful King's Day in nearly all Dutch municipalities, with some incidents

There were hardly any problems in the large cities of the Netherlands on King's Day, authorities have said. Fireworks were thrown at police officers in Baarn, a drunk driver caused a three-vehicle crash in Tilburg, and police in The Hague fired gunshots to deal with a "threatening situation."

A spokesperson for the Amsterdam police said it was a holiday "without significant incident." He emphasized that the police staffing was very high in the capital, and they were "nipping in the bud" many smaller incidents, such as fights. In terms of incidents, it was "comparable to a normal Friday or Saturday evening."

Hundreds of thousands of people were out all day in the capital. At the end of the afternoon, the municipality asked people to avoid Westerstraat in the center because it was "very busy."

Utrecht also experienced a busy edition of the holiday as usual. Several event locations became so crowded during the course of the day that many people were not allowed to attend programs at Neude, Janskerkhof, Oudkerkhof and Stadhuisplein. The municipality recommended other squares in the city to many revelers.

There were no major problems to report in Utrecht, police in the city said. On Saturday evening, a spokesperson said that she did not have a specific overview about the deployment that was necessary to keep the day under control.

There was a scuffle between a group of young people and the police in Baarn, a city in the province of Utrecht. Fireworks were thrown at the police during the overnight period from Saturday night to Sunday morning, police confirmed after reporting by local media outlets.

The group refused to vacate a park in the municipality at around midnight, leading to a brief, but grim confrontation. There were no injuries, police said. More officers responded to the scene to help remove everyone from the park.

A 20-year-old resident of Soest was arrested, but has since been released from custody. There were also disturbances elsewhere in Baarn earlier in the evening, including at the train station.

In Tilburg, police said a motorist who had too much drink caused a traffic collision with an extensive amount of damage on the Spoorlaan. The man struck two other cars, a lamppost and a traffic light just after midnight on Sunday morning, authorities alleged.

According to the police, the 34-year-old man from Tilburg ran a red light and then hit a car exiting out of a parking garage. The suspect then allegedly sideswiped a lamppost, hit a traffic light and then another car. It caused significant damage and "considerable havoc" on Spoorlaan, police said.

A breathalyzer test showed that the driver was over the legal alcohol limit, police said. "The driver of the car had to be taken to the hospital for evaluation. No one else was injured."

Police in Tilburg also arrested a 22-year-old woman from the city on suspicion of hitting a cafe worker on De Heuvel at about 2 a.m. on Sunday. The incident started over rules about the use of tobacco products. "The woman was smoking a cigarette inside a hospitality business. When a staff member confronted her about this, the woman did not want to put out her cigarette and punched the staff member in the face," police said.

Police also alleged the woman resisted arrest after a security guard tried to hand her over to officers outside the cafe. She was still in custody later on Sunday.

Police officers in The Hague also shot at a man at the end of Saturday afternoon "due to a threatening situation." The incident happened around 5:30 p.m. on Bezuidenhoutseweg. Officers and paramedics were sent to the scene after the man harmed himself with a sharp object. It was not clear what led police to fire a weapon at the man a few minutes later.

A police spokesperson said the "situation was quite threatening.” The man was hospitalized, though it was not known on Sunday afternoon if he was only treated for self-inflicted wounds, or if he also suffered a gunshot wound.

Red Cross volunteers did not experience any major incidents in the 120 municipalities where they were deployed on King's Day. "It is a pleasant King's Day and it was also a pleasant King's Night; we do not have to scale up anywhere," a spokesperson for the aid organization said at the beginning of the evening.

The volunteers were kept very busy in Amsterdam. "It mainly concerns standard first aid things: someone who has fallen, someone with shards of glass in their hand. We are quite busy with that, but we can handle it all," said the spokesperson.

In the capital and other major cities such as Utrecht and Eindhoven, the Red Cross deployed dozens of volunteers to provide first aid. In many smaller towns, some emergency workers were present as a precaution.

The weather can always be a factor at major events, but that did not cause any problems either. Temperatures fluctuated between 6 and 15 degrees Celsius on both King's Night and King's Day, with some rain showers here and there. The conditions did not lead to large numbers of people becoming either hypothermic or overheated, the Red Cross said.