Justice minister David van Weel has expressed alarm about the increasingly frequent explosions in residential areas in the Netherlands in the wake of the devastating blast in The Hague that left six people dead.

Last Saturday a blast in a terraced house in Purmerend, a commuter town north of Amsterdam, damaged five homes and left one person seriously injured. Police have ruled out a gas explosion because most of the houses in the row have been disconnected from the gas main.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the huge explosion in The Hague a week earlier, which police believe was an attack on a bridal wear shop on the ground floor.

A section of the three-storey apartment block collapsed in the blast, killing six people including three members of a Chinese family, leaving an eight-year-old boy orphaned.

Van Weel said the explosions should not be called firework bombs, after several opposition parties called for a total ban on private fireworks in response to the recent spate of blasts.

“Hand grenades”

“These are more like hand grenades that are laid at people’s doors,” Van Weel said. “We’ve seen the consequences. It’s only a matter of time until even worse things happen.”

But Jan Willem Mulder, local police team leader in Purmerend, said last weekend’s explosion had been caused by “strong fireworks combined with an accelerant”. “We can assume this was a deliberate act,” he said.

The town’s mayor, Ellen van Selm, also called for action at a national level to make it harder to obtain explosives. “We’re seeing this happening across the Netherlands,” she said. “These are such strong projectiles, something needs to be done about their availability.”

Van Weel said a task force set up earlier this year was looking at preventive measures, such as better communication between local government, police, the prosecution service and businesses.

Tougher sentences for people convicted of explosive and firework-related offences was another option, the minister said. “That always has a deterrent effect. We will raise the threshold.”

Explosions up fivefold

Between 2021 and 2023 the number of explosions has increased fivefold, with 70% of incidents taking place in the Randstad conurbation around Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.

On Wednesday the Volkskrant reported that police were investigating a link between the owner of the bridal shop at the centre of the blast in The Hague and one of the four suspects.

Both the man, identified as Moshtag B., and the owner reportedly advertised a white Range Rover for sale in separate online postings shortly before the explosion.

The same car was set on fire and destroyed while it was parked outside the the flats on Tarwekamp on the night of the blast.

Police, the prosecution service and Gerard Spong, the lawyer for the 33-year-old B., all refused to comment on the revelations in the Volkskrant or a possible link between B. and the shop owner.