The death toll at the Amsterdam apartment block where a man jumped to his death carrying a baby rose to three later on Friday, after police found a third body inside the flat itself.

The woman is the dead man’s mother and had been looking after the baby, broadcaster RTL said. When the child’s mother went to pick up her son, she found her ex partner on the premises who threatened to detonate a hand grenade, the broadcaster said.

She managed to escape, leaving her son with his father and grandmother. She alerted the police and a short while later, the man jumped out of a window in the third floor flat, killing himself and the child.

Locals told the Telegraaf the 32-year-old father was a familiar face in the neighbourhood and that he had grown up in the apartment where his mother still lived.

Police explosives experts had been brought in to deal with the grenade and neighbouring flats evacuated because of the explosives risk.