Updated Tuesday, October 16: Police in Belgium have killed a man who shot dead two Swedish soccer fans and seriously injured a third person in a gun attack in central Brussels on Monday evening.
“The perpetrator of the terrorist attack in Brussels has been identified and has died,” Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden announced in a statement posted on X on Tuesday morning.
Local media reported the man had been shot dead by police officers in a café in Brussels’ Schaerbeek neighborhood. Brussels mayor Philippe Close said that the police had to use force “to neutralize” the gunman, adding that the man had been acting on his own.
Footage circulating on the social networks on Monday evening showed the man wearing a fluorescent orange jacket running around firing an automatic weapon close to city’s Place Sainctelette, as people ran to escape.
The victims were believed to be on route to a Belgium-Sweden Euro 2024 championship qualifier match at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels, which kicked off as scheduled but was suspended at half-time when the players learned of the deaths.
The man later released a video, which was verified as being authentic by Belgian police, in which he lays claim to the shooting and says he has taken inspiration from the Islamic State.
Local media outlets have named the man as 45-year-old Tunisian national Abdesalem L., who arrived in Belgium in 2019 and requested exile.
When his request was denied in 2020, he is reported to have fallen off the radar of the Belgian immigration authorities, although it has since emerged he was known to the both the Belgian and Tunisian police, but for non-terror related offenses.
The man’s exact motives are not yet clear although Belgian prosector spokesperson Éric Van Duyse suggested he appears to have deliberately targeted Swedish nationals. Sweden has been on high security since the summer due to tensions created by the public burnings, for a number of different reasons, of the Koran.
Updated with latest: Two people were shot dead by a lone gunman in the Belgian capital of Brussels on Monday evening in a developing situation, according to local media reports.
Images circulating on social media show an armed man dressed in a florescent orange jacket close to the city’s Place Sainctelette shooting indiscriminately as people run to escape.
As of 2:30 p.m. PT, the killer was still at large with other images showing him riding off on a scooter immediately after the shooting.
Brussels Mayor Philippe Close said in a short statement around 12:20 p.m. PT that police services had mobilized “to ensure security in and around the capital”. Close said he was at the country’s crisis centre with Minister of the Interior Annelies Verlinden and Brussels Police Chief Michel Goovaerts.
There were reports that both victims were wearing Swedish football shirts. Sweden was playing Belgium this evening in a qualifying match for the Euro 2024 championship in Belgian capital.
The match kicked off as planned at 11: 45 p.m. PT but the second half was suspended after the news of the shooting reached the players and fans in the stadium. The 35,000 spectators were asked to remain in King Baudouin Stadium while Belgian security forces secured the perimeter.
Europe has been on high alert in recent days in the wake of the terror attacks on Southern Israel by Hamas on October 7, which killed more than 1,300 people and also resulted in the taking of 199 hostages.
The attacks have enflamed tensions in the Middle East and beyond as Israel retaliates with the blockade and bombing of Gaza, which has killed more than 2,700 people so far.
The reverberations have been felt in Europe and North America.
A teacher was stabbed to death by a lone attacker in a school in northern France on Friday in an incident that is being investigated as terror related.
There have also been a reports of a rise in antisemitic acts in Europe, while a six-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death in his home in Illinois by his landlord, who also critically wounded the boy’s mother in alleged anti-Muslim hate crime on Saturday.