Islamic Militants Arrested After Standoff at the Hague

PARIS — At least two Islamic extremists were arrested today after engaging police in a 15-hour standoff in The Hague, wounding three officers and escalating the violence that has engulfed the Netherlands since last week’s assassination of a filmmaker.

The confrontation in the Dutch capital erupted at about 2:45 a.m. when anti-terror police raided a house near a train station in a crackdown on Islamic extremist networks launched after last week’s murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh.

The suspects held off police by hurling a hand grenade that hurt the officers — two seriously — then barricaded themselves in the home shouting: “We will decapitate you!”

The suspects were Dutch citizens on a list of 150 extremists, who have been under surveillance by police in the Netherlands. One of the three was a convert to Islam, who had been arrested last year on terror-related charges and released, according to a law enforcement official.

Hundreds of police evacuated the block around the house in the working-class neighborhood and brought in armored vehicles. Police stormed the building about 4:20 p.m. and captured the three men.

The standoff had raised fears of a repeat of a fiery showdown after train bombings in Madrid this spring, when cornered terrorists immolated their hide-out, killing themselves and a Spanish policeman.

The frenetic week following the Van Gogh murder has stunned a tranquil, tolerant nation with a flurry of arrests, arson attacks on mosques, Islamic schools and Protestant churches, and angry debate between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The chaos has apparently achieved the objective of the accused terror cell that plotted to kill Dutch political leaders in addition to Van Gogh, whose latest film had denounced abuse of Muslim women.

The Netherlands finds itself struggling with an incendiary clash of cultures that is spurring Muslim and far-right zealots into action.

“We have to utterly reject this violence, altogether, because we’re being un-Dutch,” said Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. “Extremism is reaching the roots of our democracy. We cannot let ourselves be blinded by people who seek to drag us into a spiral of violence.”