A defence ministry IT failure is behind the major problems affecting Eindhoven airport, the emergency services and the Digid system, a spokesman has confirmed.

“We are experiencing an outage with one of our major systems which is used across the Dutch government,” spokesman Laurens Bos said. Eindhoven airport, where all flights have been grounded, has been affected because it is also a military airbase.

The emergency phone number 112 is still operating but the outage has hit communication between the various emergency services.

The Digid government identification system, some government departments, the military police, coastguard and the lower house of parliament have also been affected.

Earlier, the National Cyber Security Centre told RTL there is a problem in a data centre, which means “various users and their IT services” have been hit. A cyber attack is thought to be unlikely.

Eindhoven airport, which also functions as a military base, has been closed to all air traffic because of the outage and thousands of passengers have been stranded.

Ryanair, Transavia and Wizz Air are among the airlines that operate flights to and from the southern city. Airline TUI said it is moving flights to Brussels and will move passengers in Eindhoven by bus.

An airport spokeswoman urged people to check with their airline about replacement flights.

More to follow