An attacker stabbed two police officers in Brussels on Wednesday in a possible terror incident, the latest attack in a city still reeling from bombings by the Islamic State group that killed 32 people in March. Prosecutors identified the man, who was later shot in the leg, as 43-year-old Belgian national Hicham D. but gave no further details about him or why they were linking the attack in the Schaerbeek area to terrorism.
One of the two plainclothes officers was stabbed in the neck and the other in the stomach, police said. A third, uniformed officer reportedly suffered a broken nose while trying to stop the attacker. The incident came shortly after one of the main train stations in Brussels and the city's prosecutor's office were shut by a bomb scare which later turned out to be a false alarm.
"We have elements to believe that the (stabbing) incident was a terrorist attack," Eric Van Der Sypt, a spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor's office, told AFP. The prosecutor's statement said: "At noon two police officers were attacked by a man with a knife on the Boulevard Lambermont in Schaerbeek. Their life is not in danger. "Another police patrol was able to overpower the offender who was shot in the leg. His life is also not in danger." The suspect was in police custody, Van Der Sypt said, adding that a judge specialising in terrorism cases would decide "later" on his possible further detention.
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