An armed man shot and killed two police officers in the eastern Belgian city of Liège on Tuesday before he was subdued by police, prosecutors said.
“There are two dead policemen and two others injured,” Catherine Collignon, spokeswoman for the Liège prosecutors office told AFP.
Local newspaper Le Soir said a passerby was also killed in the shooting, and a woman taken hostage, but officials have not confirmed the report.
Belgium’s anti-terrorist crisis centre was monitoring the situation, Interior Minister Jan Jambon said on Twitter.
Images on social media showed people scurrying for safety on Liège’s central boulevard d’Avroy with shots and sirens being heard in the background. One video showed two police in body armour moving into position.
Liège, an industrial city close to the German border in the French-speaking Wallonia region, was also the scene of a shooting in 2011, when a gunman killed four people and wounded over 100 before turning the gun on himself.
Belgium has been on high alert since a Brussels-based Islamic State (IS) group cell was involved in attacks on Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people and Brussels in 2016 in which 32 died. – France 24.
