A police officer succumbed to his injuries after being attacked with a knife on Thursday evening November 10 in Brussels, the Brussels prosecutor’s office said. The alleged perpetrator of the attack was injured during his arrest and is currently hospitalized.
The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, competent in matters of organized crime and terrorism, declared that the anti-terrorist justice had been seized of the investigation.
“We have taken over the file because there is a suspicion of a terrorist motive, which will of course have to be confirmed or invalidated by the investigation”told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Eric Van Duyse, spokesperson for the federal prosecutor’s office.
“Unacceptable violence”
The facts occurred around 7:15 p.m. in the Brussels municipality of Schaerbeek, in the district of Brussels-North station. For a reason that remains to be clarified, a man armed with a knife attacked a patrol of two policemen, beating them. They then called for reinforcements and an officer from another patrol used his firearm to “neutralize the aggressor”according to the Belgian press agency Belga.
According to several media, the suspect would have suffered bullet wounds in the legs and abdomen. The two injured police officers were taken to hospital; one of the two officers, shot in the neck, did not survive.
Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden condemned in a tweet a “awful drama”, “unacceptable violence”. Prime Minister Alexander De Croo paid tribute to the killed police officer and to an entire profession “who risks his life every day to ensure the safety of our citizens”.
“My sincere hope is that his hospitalized colleague will be well”he added.
“Threats against the police”
According to several Belgian newspapers, the suspect had “made threats against the police” earlier in the day in a police station in another Brussels municipality, without being worried.
Since 2016, the year of the jihadist attacks in Brussels (32 dead on March 22), Belgium has been the scene of several attacks against soldiers and police.
The last attack considered “terrorist” occurred in Liège (East) on May 29, 2018, when Benjamin Herman, a 31-year-old radicalized offender shot and killed two police officers and a student while shouting several times ” God is great “ (” God is the greatest “). He was then shot dead by law enforcement.
On August 25, 2017, a 30-year-old man of Somali origin attacked soldiers with a knife – slightly injuring one of them – while also shouting ” God is great “ right in the city center of Brussels. He was also shot. A year earlier, on August 6, 2016, an Algerian living in Belgium attacked two policewomen with a machete in front of the police station in Charleroi (south) to cries of ” God is great “, wounding them in the face and neck before being shot. The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack the next day.