A 37-year-old Syrian national has been arrested in connection with two murders in Maastricht on Thursday night, police said on Friday. Earlier there had been talk of two arrests but police said only one man has been taken into custody.

Police have also said there was no terrorist motive to the attacks in which a man and woman died and three others, including the suspect, were injured.

‘Our research has shown there is no reason at all to suggest these incidents had a terrorist motive,’ a spokesman told the Telegraaf.

Neighbours say the victims appear to be a man and a woman who were members of the same Syrian family but did not live together, the paper said.

The first stabbing took place after fight at around 9pm in the Botsaartsstraat, with the second several minutes later in the nearby Joseph Postnessstraat. The suspect was arrested in a nearby mosque a short while later.

Although the suspect is not seriously injured, police have not been able to question him, news agency ANP said. Justice minister Ferdinand Grapperhuis described him as a ‘seriously disturbed’ individual.

The Telegraaf said neighbours claim the man who died had been physically abusive to the woman who died and her children for years and that she had fled to a shelter for battered women for a time.

The murders would appear to be some sort of revenge killing, the paper said.