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Incident at Brussels Central Station. Police shoot suicide bomber – UPDATE

Belgian counter-terrorism police are probing the identity of a suspected suicide bomber shot dead by troops guarding a Brussels railway station after he set off explosives that failed to injure anyone.

UPDATE: The man suspected of an abortive bomb attack on Brussels Central Station on Tuesday may have supported the Islamic State militant group, Belgium’s federal prosecutors said in a statement after a search on his home.

Investigators found chemical substances and materials that could be used to make explosives and concluded that he probably made the bomb there.

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“There are also indications that the suspect had sympathies for the terrorist organization IS,” the prosecutors said on Wednesday.

UPDATE: Molenbeek mayor Francoise Schepmans told reporters that the man, whom public broadcaster VRT named as Oussama Zariouh, was on police files over a drugs case last year and was divorced.

A Facebook page in that name, which had not been updated in a year, showed a man in his 30s posing regularly for selfies at the wheel of the same car. It said he was self-employed, single, came from Nador on the Mediterranean coast and graduated from the nearby university at Oujda in 2002.

Posts on the page showed an interest in Islamic charity but little obvious support for militant organisations.

Paul Cruickshank, a journalist specialising in security issues for CNN, tweeted that a Belgian counter-terrorism official had told the broadcaster that investigators had established the dead man had been a “sympathiser” of Islamic State.

UPDATE: The man shot dead at Brussels Central Station on Tuesday after an abortive detonation of a nail bomb in a bag was a Moroccan national aged 36 who had no history of being a terrorist suspect, a prosecutor said on Wednesday.

Eric Van Der Sypt told a news conference that the man’s initials were O.Z. and that his home in Brussels’ Molenbeek district had been searched. He said the man had not been wearing a suicide belt. He shouted “Allahu akbar” — God is greatest, in Arabic — before being shot dead by soldiers on patrol.

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UPDATE: Belgium has avoided a serious attack, its interior minister said on Wednesday, after a suspected suicide bomber planning to explode a large bomb caused only a minor explosion in Brussels’ central station late on Tuesday.

Several media outlets reported unnamed sources as saying the device that failed to fully explode was filled with nails and was similar to the bombs used in the attacks at Brussels airport and on the city’s metro that killed 32 people in March 2016.

“Yesterday, someone with explosives entered central station. He intended to explode a large bomb. In the end, there was a small explosion to which soldiers reacted immediately. Something much worse has been avoided,” Jan Jambon told broadcaster VTM.

The suspected attacker, who was shot dead by soldiers patrolling the station, was reportedly a 37-year-old man from Molenbeek. The inner city borough has a large immigrant population and was home to some of those involved in Islamic State attacks on Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016.

Jambon said police were searching homes in Molenbeek as part of their investigation. He gave no further details on the searches or on why the bomb had not fully exploded.

UPDATE: “We consider this a terrorist attack,” prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told reporters, declining comment on witness accounts that the man had shouted Islamist slogans before detonating what witnesses said were one or two devices in luggage.

Public broadcaster VRT said investigators believed the man had a nail bomb which failed to detonate completely.

UPDATE: Belgian troops shot a suspected suicide bomber in Brussels Central Station on Tuesday, officials said, adding that there were no other casualties and the situation was under control after people were evacuated.

A Reuters correspondent at the scene a little over an hour after the incident – in which the man detonated a small explosion – said the area was quiet, with police manning a cordon and a few bystanders calmly watching security forces at work.

Local media quoted officials offering somewhat differing accounts of what happened. A police spokesman said it was still unclear if the suspect had died, after other officials had described him as having been killed.

UPDATE: Reporters on the ground say that the men was shoot by police forces. There is no official information regarding the men and media reports are conflicting, some saying that the attacker was injured, others that he was killed by the police.

There is still no official confirmation on whether or not he was wearing an explosive vest.

UPDATE: Witnesses report the explosion took place in an underground area of the station.

UPDATE: Prime Minister Charles Michel urged people via Twitter to follow instructions from the authorities.

UPDATE: Het Laatste Nieuws tabloid newspaper quoted what it said were witnesses saying a man shouted “Allahu Akbar” in Arabic before a small explosion. Soldiers ran toward the spot, saw wires protruding from the man’s clothes, and shot him. That account could not be independently confirmed.

UPDATE: Tourists report on social media that police officers with guns started evacuating popular tourist areas. They gave no information on what was happening.

UPDATE: Belgian troops patrolling Brussels Central Station “neutralised” a person after a small explosion on Tuesday, a police spokesman said, adding that there were no other casualties and the situation was under control.

He could not confirm media reports that the person had been wearing an explosive vest and it was not clear whether the person shot was still alive.

The station and the adjacent historic downtown area, packed with tourists and locals on a hot summer evening, was partly evacuated as police set up a security cordon, witnesses told Belgian media.

The city has been on high alert for more than 18 months since Brussels-based Islamic State militants carried out attacks in Paris that killed 130 people there in November 2015 and later bombed Brussels airport and the city’s metro in March last year.

The police spokesman said: “There was an accident at Central Station. There was an explosion around a person. That person was neutralised by the soldiers that were on the scene.

“At the moment, the police are in numbers at the station and everything is under control.”

UPDATE: Central Station was evacuated.

UPDATE: Belgian police says that the man was neutralised by a guard stationed at Central Station.

UPDATE:  Belgian police said an “incident involving an individual” at Brussels Central Station was under control on Tuesday as local media ran reports that a person wearing an explosive belt had been “neutralised”.

Two loud detonations were heard by people close to Brussels Central Station. According to social media reports, there is a heavy police presence in the area.

According to the media, the police took down a men with what seems to be an explosive vest.

Reuters

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