Belgian troops shot a suspected “terrorist” bomber in Brussels Central Station on Tuesday but there were no other casualties and the situation was brought under control after people were evacuated, officials said.
The suspect in the attack is dead, Belgian prosecutors told AFP early Wednesday. “He is dead,” federal prosecutor’s office spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt said, hours after the terror suspect was shot by soldiers after a small, but intense explosion in the Belgian capital’s Gare Centrale.
Van Der Sypt told reporters some three hours after the incident that a small blast was being treated as a “terrorist” attack. He declined to comment on witness accounts that he had shouted Islamist slogans, including “Allah hu Akbar” — God is greater, in Arabic — before detonating a device on a luggage trolley in an underground concourse of the rail station.
Police had quickly evacuated the station and surrounding areas of historic downtown Brussels after the incident around 1830 GMT. The streets had been busy with tourists and locals enjoying a hot evening but were soon largely deserted and calm. Rail traffic was largely suspended.
The Belgian capital, home to the headquarters of NATO and the European Union, has been on high alert since a Brussels-based Islamic State cell launched an attack that killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015. Associates of those attackers, four months later, killed 32 people in their home city, including with bombs loaded on trolleys at Brussels Airport.
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