Srinagar: Dutch police on Monday arrested a Turkish-born suspect over tram attack in the city of Utrecht that left three people dead and five wounded.

Police had earlier launched a huge manhunt for Gokmen Tanis, 37, issuing a picture of him on the tram and warning the public not to approach him.

Heavily armed officers later surrounded a building following the bloodshed in the Netherlands’ fourth largest city and his arrest was dramatically announced at the end of a news conference.

Dutch authorities said they were still investigating the motive for the attack and said they “cannot exclude” other motives, including a family dispute.

“We have just heard that the suspect we are looking for has been arrested,” Utrecht police chief Rob van Bree told a news conference after being handed a piece of paper with news of the arrest.

The head of the Dutch national counter-terrorism service, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, confirmed “the arrest of the main suspect for the shooting”.

He said authorities had lowered the threat level in Utrecht from the maximum level five as a result of the arrest.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the theory that it was a terror attack “could not be excluded”, vowing that the Netherlands would “never give way to intolerance”.

Security forces were on high alert at airports and mosques following the shooting, after which a body covered in a white sheet could be seen lying on the tram tracks.

Police in Utrecht also announced in the evening they were revising the number of people who were injured down to five. Earlier, police had said nine people had been wounded in the shooting.

The death toll of three in the shooting was not changed.

Mosques in Utrecht had shut for the day following the attack, the ANP news agency said, which comes just days after 50 people were killed at mosques in New Zealand in a rampage by a white supremacist terrorist. (Agencies)