Police last week discovered 1,300 kilos of fireworks stored under a block of flats in the west of Amsterdam, local broadcaster AT5 has confirmed.

The fireworks were found following a tip-off. ‘Storing this amount of dangerous fireworks under housing could have been a disaster if there was a fire,’ a police spokesman told the broadcaster.

Locals said the building was in the Jan Pieter Heijestraat, which has a bike parking area on the ground floor. One woman told AT5 she saw a number of boxes inside, marked ‘not for personal use’.

A 65-year-old man was arrested but later released from custody. He remains a suspect, police said.