Flights in and out of the Hamburg Airport in Germany were canceled until further notice after the authorities responded Saturday night to an armed man who drove his vehicle onto the tarmac and parked near a plane, precipitating a standoff that has continued into Sunday afternoon.
The police said on Sunday that it appeared that the man, 35, took his daughter, who is 4, from her mother on Saturday evening and sped off with her. According to preliminary information, they added, the man appeared to come from the German state of Lower Saxony and his intention was to take his daughter to Turkey, where he is from. The police negotiated with the man in Turkish throughout the night, they said.
The episode began around 8:30 p.m., the police said, when the man drove through a gate to get to the tarmac. They declined to say whether he had driven past any security guards.
The man fired at least one shot into the air, Sandra Levgrün, a spokeswoman for the Hamburg Police Department, said in an interview posted on social media. She said that no injuries had been reported. Two small fires were observed on the tarmac early on, though the authorities were still trying to determine if the man had set them.
Passengers aboard the plane near the vehicle and other planes were evacuated and taken to a nearby hotel, the police said.
Video posted on social media showed heavily armed officers escorting a group of passengers across the tarmac to a bus.
The woman who posted the video, Alina Tuider, 32, said her 8:05 flight home to Vienna was preparing for takeoff when the plane came to a halt.
“We saw armed police running across the field next to our plane,” Ms. Tuider said in a phone interview, adding that the plane had been grounded for about an hour by that time. “So we knew there was something going on.”
At one point, she thought she heard a gunshot before later learning about the armed driver from the news on her phone.
Around midnight local time, police evacuated her plane and she was later taken to a hotel.
In a statement issued shortly before 8 a.m., the police said that flights would remain suspended indefinitely as the police operation continued and that most access roads to the airport had been closed.
Jin Yu Young and Emma Bubola contributed reporting.