Arrested over school shooting threat

Dutch police have arrested an 18-year-old male accused of threatening to carry out a shooting at a southern Dutch school, authorities said yesterday.

Schools and child care centres in the city of Breda were closed yesterday after the threat was made via the internet, Dutch media reported. The city of Breda said in a statement the threat was made on a US website.

The suspect was arrested at about 02.30 GMT yesterday at his parental home in the southern city of Zundert, police said.

A police spokesman said the suspect posted a message on the internet that he was planning a shooting at an unnamed Breda school, but told police after his arrest that it had been a joke and he had not meant any serious harm.

"The public prosecution and the city of Breda took it very seriously," the spokesman said.

The arrest came after 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer shot dead 15 people last Wednesday, many of them at his former school, in the German town of Winnenden.

German police also closed a school in Ilsfed in southwestern Germany yesterday after a warning in an internet chatroom that a gun attack was planned there, just two days after the deadly shooting rampage in nearby Winnenden.