Gruesome find comes one day after discovery of decapitated corpse of known gang member in suburb of Dutch capital

A day after a decapitated corpse was discovered in a burning car in south-east Amsterdam, the severed head that belonged to it has been found outside a cafe near the city centre.

In a gruesome new development in an increasingly violent war between rival Dutch drug gangs, police told local media the body parts were those of Nabil Amzieb, 23, a known gang member.

Amzieb’s headless corpse, identified from its fingerprints, was found early on Tuesday morning inside a stolen Volkswagen van that had been set ablaze on a housing estate in the south-eastern suburbs.

His head was discovered at 7.30am on Wednesday on the pavement outside the Fayrouz cafe, a shisha or waterpipe lounge on the busy Amstelveenseweg street, not far from the popular Vondelpark.

“It seemed to have been placed in such a way that the head was staring in through the windows of the cafe, like a kind of signal,” Stan Koeman, who runs a snack bar just along the street, told Het Parool newspaper.

“It looked really bizarre. Not something you expect to see on a Dutch street. It made me think of the middle ages, or the Middle East. I’m OK now, but I don’t think I’ll be sleeping very well tonight.”

Koeman said police, who arrived on the scene within minutes of the head’s discovery, covered it with a blue wheelie bin and ordered passersby who had taken photos with their phones to delete them.

At least 16 people have died in the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain in related underworld killings since March 2012, when a Dutch gang known as the Turtles is believed to have stolen cocaine worth £14m, part of a larger shipment – much of it reportedly destined for the British market – entering Europe through the Belgian port of Antwerp.

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At least one of those killed, a 30-year-old customer services manager, Stefan Eggermont, who died in a burst of automatic gunfire as he was getting out of his car outside his Amsterdam home in July 2014, was the victim of mistaken identity.

But most of the dead have been known Dutch criminals and gang members shot dead in a series of tit-for-tat killings, including several public shootouts that began with the murder of Najeb Bouhbouh, 34, who was gunned down at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Antwerp in October 2012.

The Fayrouz cafe was was a known gangland hangout, according to Wouter Laumans, a Dutch crime reporter who has published a book on the “Mocro mafia” – so called because of the Moroccan or Dutch Caribbean background of many of the gang members.

The shisha lounge was linked to the notorious Dutch mobster Gwenette Martha, who was shot dead in central Amsterdam in May 2014 – three months after two hitmen gunned down fellow gang member Mohammed el Mayouri just around the corner from the cafe.

“The bar is well known to police as the headquarters of one of the Amsterdam drugs gangs,” Laumans told the Dutch public broadcaster NOS. Mayouri had been in the bar “just before he was shot dead”, Laumans said, while others “have been arrested outside on suspicion of preparing attacks”.

Laumans told the broadcaster the decapitation marked a new and worrying escalation in the drugs war, comparing the killing to the kind of violence seen in countries such as Mexico, where drug cartel kingpins demonstrate their authority by leaving severed heads on doorsteps.

“I don’t know what the precise meaning of this decapitation is,” he said. “Maybe a warning not to speak, or not to betray. But it makes you wonder what to expect next.”