A gunman who killed two Swedish football fans in a terror attack in Brussels has been shot dead after 12 hours on the run, Belgium’s interior ministry said on Tuesday.
He was shot in the chest during a stop-and-search in a cafe as authorities searched Belgium’s capital.
Annelies Verlinden, the interior minister, said the terrorist died on the way to hospital in an ambulance. She said authorities were working to formally identify him through fingerprints.
Belgian police found the automatic rifle used in the attack on the suspect, she added.
The identity of the man who was shot dead has not been released, but local media reports suggested it was the gunman.
Gunman named as Abdesalem Lassoued
The gunman was named on Monday night as Abdesalem Lassoued, 45, from Tunisia, a failed asylum seeker who had been living illegally in the Schaerbeek area of the Belgian capital.
He allegedly shot three people, killing two of them and leaving the third with serious injuries, to “avenge Muslims” in an attack the gunman said was linked to the Islamic State terror group.
Footage taken by local residents showed a man wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and a white helmet pulling up on a scooter, dismounting, and firing shots from a rifle at a taxi.
Several people fled into a nearby building, but the gunman followed them into the entrance and opened fire again.
The shooting came as Belgium hosted Sweden in a European Championship football qualifying match. The match was abandoned on the request of the players who heard about the shooting at half-time.
Incident declared terrorist attack
The Belgian government declared the incident a terrorist attack soon afterwards, as the authorities raised the threat level to its highest level.
The suspect was still on the run on Tuesday morning after police officers conducted searches in Schaerbeek.
A scooter believed to have been used by the terrorist to flee the scene of the attack was discovered nearby.
Unverified video showed a man wearing a matching the gunman’s description riding through the streets of Brussels on a scooter on Monday while holding a rifle that appeared to be an AK-47.
Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, told a press conference early on Tuesday that the suspect applied for asylum in the country in 2019, with the application turned down a year later.
As the alleged gunman was not living in an asylum centre, no effort was made to round him up and deport him back to his native Tunisia.
The 45-year-old was eventually wiped from the national register in 2021.
In his native Tunisia, he was known to the security services as having been radicalised and prepared to fight in a Jihadi conflict zone.
Vincent Van Quickenborne, the Belgian justice minister, said it “was part of dozens of daily reports of this type” at the time.
Lassoued had also been linked with crimes related to human trafficking, illegal residence and attacking state security personnel.
Most recently, he threatened a resident of an asylum centre, who reported that he had been convicted of terrorism in Tunisia, according to local media reports.
Belgium’s National Crisis Centre said the alleged terrorist had been motivated by his victims’ Swedish nationality. They were reportedly wearing Swedish football shirts.
“At this time there is no indication that the attack is linked to the Israeli-Palestine conflict,” it added. (The Telegraph)
