Concrete barricades were placed around the popular Dam Square in Amsterdam late Wednesday night. Weighing up to 500 kilograms, the blocks are meant to stop vehicles from barrelling through the area, a spokesperson for the city told AT5.
The move is one of several visible and invisible counter-terrorism measures undertaken by the city, a spokesperson said. The square is home to one of the country's royal palaces.
Mayors of eight Dutch and three Belgian cities are going to come together on Tuesday evening for a summit about jihad fighters after the report that threats of a rising number of returned fighters on European soil warned of possible attacks in the future, the AD reports.
Cuts to the Netherlands Security Service AIVD are going to be entirely restored. The Cabinet does not believe it responsible to make cuts to the budget of this service, especially seeing the new heightened threat of a terrorist attack inside the country, De Telegraaf reports.
The EU counter-terrorism coordinator has said that The Netherlands should be proud of its anti-terrorism activities. In an interview with Trouw, coordinator Gilles De Kerchove says that it may be early national terrorism activity such as the murders on Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and Theo van Gogh in 2004 that have afforded The Netherlands the ability to tackle the current situation as well as it does.
