With 17 cases of murder and manslaughter this year, the region of West-Brabant has now overtaken Amsterdam as the murder capital of the Netherlands, the AD says on Thursday.

In Amsterdam there were 15 murders over the year as a whole, or just over one per month. January was the bloodiest month nationwide with 14 deaths, including one double murder, according to website Moordatlas.nl.

The AD says there were 111 killings in the Netherlands as a whole, a sharp drop on 2014’s total of 135. In both Amsterdam and West-Brabant, around half the murders were due to organised crime.

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Eric Slot, who runs the Moordatlas website, told the AD that one reason for the declining murder rate is that people have less physical contact. ‘You used to buy drugs from a dealer,’ he said. ‘Now you buy them via the internet.’

In addition, people are better educated and there has been a drop in the number of people in their 20s and 30s, who are most likely to commit murder, he said.