At least two people died this Monday and a third was injured in Brussels by shots fired by a man armed with a military rifle in the center of the Belgian capital before fleeing. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo spoke on X (formerly Twitter) of an “attack” and confirmed that the fatalities were Swedish nationals. A video of the alleged perpetrator, who is still on the run, is circulating on social networks in which he claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the Islamic State, in which he speaks of up to three fatalities and who, according to his own statement, said in Arabic that he did this in order to ” to avenge the Muslims.” Police are actively searching for the perpetrator or perpetrators of the attack, which was registered after the murder of a history teacher at a high school in France last Friday and has also put the neighboring country on high terror alert.
The events unfolded shortly after 7:00 p.m. in the center of Brussels, when, according to some cameras, a man in a fluorescent orange vest – the same one later seen in the protest video – got off a motorcycle. According to some media, he starts with a military rifle in a central street of Brussels, shouting “Allah is great.” The man then entered a building and fired several more shots, one apparently at close range at a person lying on the ground. He then went out and shot at a taxi before escaping on the same motorcycle he arrived at the scene on. According to La Libre Belgique, police have confirmed the deaths of two people.
According to a translation by the newspaper Le Soir, the alleged perpetrator in the video identifies himself as Abdesalam. “We live for our religion and we die for our religion, thank God. “Your brother Abdesalam avenged the Muslims, I just killed three Swedes,” he says in the video.
“My sincere condolences go out to the families of the victims of the cowardly attack in Brussels,” said De Croo from the national crisis center. The Prime Minister assured that, together with his interior and justice ministers, he was “monitoring the situation” and called on Brussels citizens to “remain vigilant”. He also communicated with his Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson, to whom he expressed his condolences. “As close allies, we fight together against terrorism,” he said in a message addressed to the Swedish head of government. Also meeting with De Croo are the mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close, who has assured that security forces will be “mobilized” to ensure the safety of citizens, and several cabinet ministers. According to the LN24 network, the terrorist threat level has been raised to the maximum level of 4, meaning the threat is serious and imminent. Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib also declared herself “horrified by the terrorist attack” and called for “all necessary means to combat radicalism to be mobilized.”
The EU Justice Commissioner, the Belgian Didier Reynders, has also spoken of a jihadist attack. “After France, Belgium is again being attacked by Islamist terrorism,” he tweeted. “We must remain vigilant and steadfast in the face of this constant threat,” he added. Her Interior Minister Ylva Johansson expressed shock at a “terrorist attack” in Brussels and said she was in contact with Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden.
The local press reports that the fatalities were Swedish nationals. At least one of them was wearing a national soccer team jersey. The Belgian team, the Red Devils, will play the Swedish team in the European Cup on Monday evening in Brussels. The football match between Belgium and Sweden started at the scheduled time. But according to Swedish public television SVT, the Swedish players refused to return to the field at halftime when the nationality of the deceased was revealed. The game was interrupted, but the police asked all spectators to stay in the stadium. According to SVT, the Swedish association’s security chief, Martin Fredman, has stated that he “doesn’t want Swedes to walk around the city” as long as the suspects are not arrested.
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According to the France Presse agency, an investigation has been launched into a terrorist attack.
The suspected attack in Brussels came three days after Islamist terror struck again in the heart of France. Dominique Bernard, a 57-year-old French teacher, was stabbed to death by an Islamist on Friday at the Gambetta-Carnot public high school in Arras, a commune of 40,000 people in northern France. The arrested attacker, identified as Mohammed Mogouchkov, uttered the phrase “Allahu akbar” (God is great) at the time of the events. According to reports, it is a 20-year-old man, a former student of the center, of Russian nationality and originally from Ingushetia. The authorities had him cited for Islamist radicalization.
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