A two-year-old girl of Kurdish origin who died after police gave chase to a van carrying illegal migrants in Belgium succumbed to a bullet wound to the face, prosecutors said Friday. The police had opened fire to stop the van after a highway chase between Namur and Maisieres, a suburb of the city of Mons.
The child, who was on board the van with her parents, died in the ambulance on her way to hospital.
"The autopsy determined that the cause of death was a bullet that entered the cheek," prosecutor Frederic Bariseau told reporters in Tournai near the French border. Police have opened an internal investigation to determine the circumstances of the girl's death, Bariseau said. "We cannot exclude that this bullet came from a police officer's gun," he said.