Dozens of armed men who stormed a farmhouse in the eastern Netherlands have been reported to have travelled from a warehouse in Brussels, where they were given their final briefing only hours before the attack.
The group, made up mainly of Belgian and French nationals, was told what was expected of it on arrival at the warehouse.
Some of the men were unhappy and continued to the Netherlands under protest, the paper reported. They had been recruited at speed through encrypted social media channels.
About 30 masked men, several carrying automatic rifles, arrived in two vans on the Ewijkseweg in Overasselt, in Gelderland province, at about 4am on September 1.
One of them shot dead Berry Leenders, a 51-year-old security guard from the nearby town of Wijchen who had been hired by the household.
The group then opened fire on the first police officers to reach the scene. Two were seriously wounded and one was for a time in a life-threatening condition, though both were later reported to be out of danger.
Police closed off the village for a full day, deploying the Special Intervention Service and ordering residents to stay indoors.
Officers have since arrested 35 people at locations across the country, among them Dutch, Belgian, French and Algerian nationals.
Justice minister David van Weel described the violence as “unprecedented” for the Netherlands and blamed international drug cartels operating across borders.
He declined to say who was behind the attack and rejected the description of his country as a narco State, though he acknowledged that criminal networks had taken root there.
A video circulating online since the shooting shows masked men accusing a resident of the property of stealing 1,283kg of cocaine and giving him 12 hours to return it.
Police have not confirmed that the footage is authentic or that it is connected to the raid, and have not set out a motive.
The house belongs to a 28-year-old man arrested several times on drug trafficking suspicions, Dutch media reported. Investigators found a bag of firearms at a car park in Wijchen on September 2.
Heumen mayor Joerie Minses has ordered the property closed for a year and barred one resident from the municipality for a fortnight.
It is the fourth closure since 2020, when the house was sealed after a fire at a drug lab on the site. At least 25 shots were fired at the building last year.
The Brussels link comes as the Belgian capital contends with its own drug violence, after a run of shootings in its southern police zone in August left residents and officers on edge.
