Word: groningen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...grim replay of that incident, nine young Moluccans hijacked a Utrecht-Groningen express train near De Punt on May 23, while five others seized the primary school at Bovensmilde, where there were 105 children and five teachers. There was no doubt that the Moluccans intended to terrify the country. The children were forced to the windows to chant to the waiting troops and parents, "Van Agt, we want to live!" On several occasions hostages were displayed outside the train with ropes around their necks. But after an influenza-type epidemic broke out at the school, the terrorists freed...
There were a few other merciful concessions to the hostages on the train. After 13 days, the terrorists released two pregnant women, ages 25 and 31. Three days later they wheeled out a 46-year-old sailor suffering from chest pains; he was rushed to Groningen University's intensive care unit...
...providing smoke cover for the troops, the low-flying Starfighters were deliberately used to make the hostages seek cover on the floor-the safest place for them during a gun battle. Authorities theorized that both victims #151;a 40-year-old man from Elst and an Indonesian girl from Groningen who spent her 20th birthday on the train -were shot when they stood up. But so effective were the terrifying roars of the jetcraft that the great majority of the prisoners instinctively dove for the ground. Summed up Air Force Major W.A. Blaauw: "It was a nice operation. You must...
...mention those who regained their freedom as the result of it. One of them was Daan Peter Pot, 20, a civil engineering student at the Groningen technical college, who missed his year-end examinations during the ordeal (his dean ordered him advanced anyway). The Moluccans, he said, had treated him reasonably well, and despite low moments, morale among the passengers had remained surprisingly high. The running joke among the group, he said, was that their endless train "ride" must mean that Holland had become a huge country...
Creating Trouble. The kidnapers were South Moluccan rebels with a history of creating trouble in The Netherlands. In December 1975 another group of terrorists seized the Indonesian consulate in Amsterdam and a train on the Utrecht-Groningen rail line (TIME, Dec. 15, 1975). Before that 15-day ordeal ended with the surrender of 14 Moluccans, three train passengers had been executed and a fourth hostage fell to his death from a consulate window...