By: A small missile punched through the facade of the building where several of the Netherlands' national newspapers are printed early Wednesday and shattered four large windows, police and eyewitnesses said.
No one was injured. There was no immediate claim of responsibility or apparent motive for the attack.
Amsterdam police said "there was no trace" of the culprits.
The building houses the presses for the left-leaning national newspaper De Volkskrant, Trouw which has a Protestant religious orientation, NRC Handelsblad which is known for in-depth financial reporting, and the Amsterdam city paper Het Parool.
The building, in an industrial area on the outskirts of town, was "struck by an explosive projectile," shortly after midnight (2300 GMT), said a police statement.
"Specialists from the Explosives Safety Team found traces which tell us that the damage was caused by a fired or launched explosive," it said. "The explosive payload also caused damage inside the building."
Police were trying to determine the extent of structural damage. They closed off the surrounding area and forensic experts searched the far side of an adjacent street ? possibly the site from which the missile was launched.
Police barred journalists from the area.
The missile left a hole the size of a large fist above an entrance to the building, along with the shattered double-pane windows.
"You felt the thud go through the whole building. Everything shook," said newspaper distributor Frans Vega, who was quoted by De Volkskrant.
Trouw and De Volkskrant were delivered on time Wednesday morning, and PcM said NRC and Het Parool, afternoon papers, also were expected to be printed and delivered on time.
The motive for the attack is "truly a big mystery," De Volkskrant said in a statement. "We don't have any 'heavy' story that we're about to break."
Het Parool editor Erik van Gruijthuijsen said the paper hadn't had any threats recently.
"Maybe it was aimed at the press as a whole," he told NRC. Parool has been running a series about a crackdown on criminals operating in Amsterdam's Red Light District.
The country also is preparing for national elections Nov. 22 and awaiting the verdict of a major trial of terrorism suspects Nov. 23.
"There's something in the paper every day that people get terribly wound up over," Van Gruijthuijsen said.
He added that a large number of employees were working at the time the missile was fired, and people could easily have been injured or killed.
The police statement called for witnesses to come forward.
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