Two people died in the Netherlands in fireworks accidents and there were scattered instances of violence as the country celebrated the New Year, and in a separate incident a historic church in the heart of Amsterdam burned down.
The Netherlands traditionally rings in the New Year with people setting off their own fireworks, which causes hundreds of injuries and millions of euros in damage every year.
This year, some 250 people were arrested on New Year’s Eve and in several towns riot police were deployed, police said.
“The impact of heavy fireworks and arson this New Year’s Eve in some areas was utterly devastating,” police said in a statement Thursday. “The targeted violence against emergency services and police was intense again.”
The head of the Dutch Police Union, Nine Kooiman, reported an “unprecedented amount of violence against police and emergency services” over New Year’s Eve.
She said she herself had been pelted three times by fireworks and other explosives as she worked a shift in Amsterdam.
Shortly after midnight, authorities released a rare country-wide alert on mobile phones warning people not to call overwhelmed emergency services unless lives were at risk.
Reports of attacks against police and firefighters were widespread across the country.
In the southern city of Breda, people threw petrol bombs at police.
The fireworks accidents killed a 38-year-old man in Aalsmeer, close to Amsterdam, and a boy from Nijmegen, a town in the east of the country, police said.
In Amsterdam, the neo-Gothic Vondelkerk, near the city’s central Vondelpark, was almost destroyed by a fire that started shortly after midnight.
The 50m-high church tower collapsed and the roof was badly damaged but the structure was expected to remain intact, Amsterdam authorities said.
The Amsterdam police and fire department said they were investigating and had no comment yet on what caused the blaze in the church, which was built in 1872.
New Year’s Eve 2025 marked the last year before a nationwide ban on the sale of fireworks to consumers will come into effect.
Emergency room doctors, police, firefighters and local and national politicians have campaigned for the ban for years.
According to the Dutch Pyrotechnics Association, revellers splashed out a record €129mn ($151mn) on fireworks.
Some areas had been designated firework-free zones, but this appeared to have little effect.
An AFP journalist in such a zone in The Hague reported loud bangs until around 3am.
In Belgium, meanwhile, police made scores of arrests as officers in both Brussels and Antwerp were targeted with fireworks – with a New Year’s ban on their use failing to prevent chaotic scenes in both major cities.
Police used tear gas and arrested more than 100 people in the port city of Antwerp, where minors as young as 10 or 11 targeted officers and emergency services with fireworks and stones, setting fire to bikes, cars and trash cans, a spokesperson told AFP.
Authorities confiscated a number of “very dangerous” professional grade fireworks, the spokesperson said.
A 12-year-old child was seriously injured in a fireworks incident in the northern city.
Likewise in the capital Brussels, police said they were “repeatedly” targeted with fireworks, making some 70 arrests overnight.
In Germany, two 18-year-olds died in the western city of Bielefeld when they set off home-made fireworks that produced “deadly facial injuries”, local police said in a statement.
