Around 3,000 people staged a peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration in Amsterdam on Sunday, calling for an end to the bloody Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, an Agence France-Presse correspondent said. 

People of all ages -- Arab and European -- gathered on the Museumplein square, opposite the renowned Rijksmuseum, before marching through the city center, carrying signs including "Stop the war" and "Israel war criminals."

Relatives of the 192 Dutch victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 are waiting near Amsterdam's Schiphol airport to fly to the crash site in Ukraine, the airline said on Saturday.

"It's not yet known when the families will go," an airline spokeswoman told Agence France Presse, asking not to be named.

Dutch police on Wednesday evacuated Amsterdam's main Dam Square, where one of the royal palaces is situated, because of a bomb threat.

"Following a bomb threat at the upmarket Bijenkorf department store, the building on Dam Square has been evacuated," police said in a tweet.

Amsterdam residents fearing the loss of a popular park have rejected a multi-million-euro Holocaust memorial by famed U.S. architect Daniel Libeskind, forcing officials to rethink the plan.

A district council in the city voted on Tuesday to send the project back to the drawing board after residents complained that the city had backed the project without having properly consulted them.

Three Secret Service agents protecting President Barack Obama in Amsterdam this week were sent home and put on leave after a night of drinking, The Washington Post reported.

"One of them was found drunk and passed out in a hotel hallway," the Post reported, citing three unnamed people familiar with the case.

Dutch police have arrested several airport workers at Amsterdam's Schiphol who allegedly picked up cocaine packages stashed aboard planes arriving from Latin America, a gendarme spokesman said on Tuesday.

A total of 15 people have been arrested since July, seven of them employed by the same company at Schiphol, spokesman Robert van Kapel told Agence France Presse, declining to name the company.

A United Boeing 777 bound for Amsterdam was forced to turn back and make an emergency landing in Houston on Thursday after the plane's second engine shut down, officials said.

There were no injuries or further problems upon landing, United Airlines spokesman Luke Punzenberger told Agence France Presse in an emailed statement.

Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander became Europe's youngest monarch on Tuesday after his mother, Queen Beatrix, abdicated and his country hailed the avowedly 21st-century king with a massive, orange-hued party.

"I Queen Beatrix... abdicate in favor of my son Willem-Alexander," the act said, as read out before the signing that was broadcast live from the Amsterdam palace.

The Dutch government has raised its terror threat level from "limited" to "substantial," saying Dutch citizens are traveling to Syria to fight in the civil war and could return battle-hardened, traumatized and further radicalized.

The country's National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism said in a statement Wednesday "the chance of an attack in the Netherlands or against Dutch interests abroad has risen."

At least 60 people were injured, up to 20 of them seriously, in a two-train collision Saturday outside Amsterdam, Dutch transport police said.

"There are 60 people injured -- some 15 to 20 badly," police spokesman Ed Kraszewski told Agence France Presse, after the head-on smash near Sloterdijk in the western suburbs of Amsterdam.