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Belgium shooting: Attacker stabs two police officers and steals their guns before shooting them in incident feared to be terror-related | Belgium shooting: Attacker stabs two police officers and steals their guns before shooting them in incident feared to be terror-related |
(35 minutes later) | |
An attacker stabbed two police officers in the Belgian city of Liege, stealing their weapons and shooting them dead before also gunning down a bystander in an incident authorities are treating as terror-related. | |
The man, who was later killed by police, approached the two female officers from behind and stabbed them several times on a boulevard in the centre of Belgium's third-largest city, around 30 miles from the German border. | |
The attacker then shot dead a 22-year-old man, who was sat in a vehicle parked nearby, and took a woman hostage in a school close to where the shooting took place outside a city cafe. | |
Pupils were moved to safety as a gun battle broke out that sent people in the street racing for cover. Several police were wounded before the attacker was finally killed. | |
“Liege police intervened. He came out firing at police, wounding a number of them, notably in the legs. He was shot dead,” said Philippe Dulieu, spokesman for the Liege prosecutor's office. | |
“The event is classed as a terrorist incident.” | |
Newspaper La Libre Belgique quoted a police source as saying the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar”. | |
The attacker was named by public broadcaster RTBF as a 36-year-old petty criminal who had been let out on day-release from a local prison on Monday. | |
It said investigators were examining whether he converted to Islam and had been radicalised in jail. | |
However, Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, said it was too early to say what had caused the incident in a statement expressing his condolences to the families of the victims. | |
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