Brussels, Oct 17: A suspect in a shooting rampage that killed two Swedish nationals in Brussels
overnight has been shot dead by police and the weapon believed to have been used by the man has
been recovered, Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden said on Tuesday.
Verlinden told VRT radio that “we have the good news that we found the individual”.
Amateur videos posted on social media of Monday’s attack showed a man wearing an orange
fluorescent vest pull up on a scooter, take out a large weapon and open fire on passersby before
chasing them into a building to gun them down.
Authorities had been searching for a 45-year-old suspected Tunisian extremist who was known to
police and was living in Belgium illegally.
Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden said that a person may have been shot by police early Tuesday
in connection with the rampage. “It appears someone has been shot,” she told VRT radio. “The
federal prosecutor’s office still has to confirm the identity” of the person.
“Last night, three people left for what was supposed to be a wonderful soccer party. Two of them
lost their lives in a brutal terrorist attack,” Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said at a news
conference just before dawn. “Their lives were cut short in full flight, cut down by extreme
brutality.”
De Croo said his thoughts were with the victims’ families and that he had sent his condolences to the
Swedish prime minister. Security has been beefed up in the capital, particularly around places linked
to the Swedish community in the city.
“The attack that was launched yesterday was committed with total cowardice,” De Croo said.
Not far from the scene of the shooting, the Belgium-Sweden soccer match in the Belgian national
stadium was suspended at halftime and the 35,000 fans held inside as a precaution while the
attacker was at large.
Prosecutor Eric Van Duyse said “security measures were urgently taken to protect the Swedish
supporters” in the stadium.
More than two hours after the game was suspended, a message flashed on the big stadium screen
saying, “Fans, you can leave the stadium calmly”.
Stand after stand emptied onto streets filled with police as the search for the attacker continued.
“Frustrated, confused, scared. I think everyone was quite scared,” said Caroline Lochs, a fan from
Antwerp.
De Croo said the assailant was a Tunisian man living illegally in Belgium who used a military weapon
to kill the two Swedes and shoot a third who is recovering from “severe injuries”.
Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw described how the suspect, a 45-year-old man who wasn’t
named, had posted a video online claiming to have killed three Swedish people.
The suspect is alleged to have said in the video that, for him, the Quran is “a red line for which he is
ready to sacrifice himself”.
Sweden raised its terror alert to the second-highest level in August after a series of public Quran-
burnings by an Iraqi refugee living in Sweden resulted in threats from Islamic militant groups.
Belgian prosecutors said overnight that nothing suggested the attack was linked to the latest war
between Israel and Hamas.
Police raided a building in the Brussels neighbourhood of Schaerbeek overnight where the man was
thought be staying but did not find him. Sweden’s foreign ministry sent out a text message to
subscribers in Belgium asking them “to be vigilant and to carefully listen to instructions from the
Belgian authorities”.
According to Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne, the suspect was denied asylum in 2019. He
was known to police and had been suspected of involvement of human trafficking, living illegally in
Belgium and of being a risk to state security.
Information provided to the Belgian authorities by an unidentified foreign government suggested
that the man had been radicalised and intended to travel abroad to fight in a holy war. But the
Belgian authorities were not able to establish this, so he was never listed as dangerous.
The man was also suspected of threatening a person in an asylum centre and a hearing on that
incident had been due to take place on Tuesday, Van Quickenborne said.
Belgian Asylum State Secretary Nicole de Moor said the man disappeared after his asylum
application was refused so the authorities were unable to locate him to organise his deportation.
A terror alert for Brussels was raised overnight to 4, the top of Belgian’s scale, indicating an
extremely serious threat. It previously stood at 2, which means the threat was average. The alert
level for the rest of the country was raised to 3.
De Croo said that Belgium would never submit to such attacks. “Moments like this are a heavy
ordeal,” he told reporters, “but we are never going to let ourselves be intimidated by them”. (AP)
