On 23 May 1977, a train was hijacked near the village of De Punt, Netherlands. At around 09:00 that morning, nine armed Moluccan nationalists pulled the emergency brake and took over 50 people hostage. The hijacking lasted 20 days and ended with a raid by Dutch counter-terrorist special forces, during which two hostages and six hijackers were killed. The same day as the train hijacking, four other South Moluccans took over a hundred hostages at an elementary school in Bovensmilde, around 20 km (12 mi) away. The train hijacking was only the second such hijacking to take place in the Netherlands; the other, a 1975 train hijacking in Wijster, had also been perpetrated by Moluccans. Background After fighting for the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies, thousands of South Moluccans were forcibly exiled to the Netherlands. The Dutch government promised they would eventually get their own independent state, the Republic of South Maluku (RMS). But after about 25 years of living in temporary camps, often in poor conditions, the South Moluccans felt that the Dutch government had failed to live up to its promises. It was then that some members of the younger South Moluccan generation started a series of radical actions to bring attention to their cause. Developments While the train hijacking was taking place, four other South Moluccans took 105 children and five teachers hostage at a primary school in the nearby village of Bovensmilde. Both of these actions were carried out to force the (recently resigned) Dutch government to keep its promises about the RMS, break diplomatic ties with the Indonesian government and release 21 Moluccan prisoners involved in separate 1975 hostage-taking actions. An ultimatum was set for 25 May at 14:00, after which the hijackers threatened to blow up both the train and the school. The hostages on the train were forced to help cover all the windows, preventing authorities from ascertaining what was happening inside the train; only near the end of the crisis were electronic eavesdropping devices installed by Dutch Marines. About 2,000 Marines and soldiers were stationed both at the train and school. Dutch parliamentary elections were planned for 25 May 1977. Given the ongoing hostage crisis, leaders of the different political parties agreed to cancel their election campaigns, but the elections themselves took place on the planned date. After their ultimatum expired, the hijackers announced new demands: an airplane at Amsterdam Schiphol