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Belgian police have fatally shot the suspected gunman who killed two Swedish football fans in Brussels, as European countries remain on heightened security alert for potential repercussions from the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Belgium’s federal prosecutor confirmed that the alleged perpetrator had died in hospital after police opened fire on Tuesday morning in a café where a witness had identified him. An AR-15 military rifle and a bag of clothes were found at the premises, the prosecutor said, adding that the origin of the weapon was under investigation.
The attack on Monday evening took place after hundreds of Swedes arrived in Brussels for a Euro 2024 qualifying match that was abandoned at half-time as spectators were evacuated.
European countries have been on heightened alert because of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The attack comes a few days after a Chechen national stabbed a teacher to death in northern France. Belgian authorities said there was no indication that the Brussels attack was linked to the conflict in the Middle East.
Belgium’s prime minister Alexander De Croo called the killing of the Swedish football fans a “brutal terrorist attack”, with recent burnings of Islam’s holy book in the Nordic country regarded as a motivation for the assault.
“It seems that Sweden was deliberately targeted due to the copies of the Koran that were burned there,” justice minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said.
De Croo said the threat level for the capital had been lowered from four, its highest, to three as the threat was no longer perceived as “imminent”.
“There are no indications that there could be several perpetrators,” De Croo told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the police force would retain an increased presence on the capital’s streets.
The 45-year-old perpetrator of Tunisian origin had been on Belgian authorities’ radar since 2016, when another country alerted them that the man had a “radicalised profile” and was planning to join jihadist groups in a conflict zone, said Van Quickenborne. The information was verified at the time but could not be pursued further.
De Croo said the attacker was living in the country illegally after his asylum claim filed in 2019 was rejected. Authorities confirmed his name was Abdesalem Lassoued.
Van Quickenborne also said the suspect had a previous conviction in Tunisia, and that a meeting regarding his case was scheduled by Belgian authorities this week.
The incident comes at a time in which the EU is re-evaluating its asylum and migration policies, with fraught debates over how to deal with people whose claims are rejected but cannot be returned to their home countries.
The two Swedish nationals were killed near Sainctelette square, in the north-west of the capital. A third person, who was also Swedish, was injured in the shooting just after 7pm. Videos posted on social media, which could not be independently verified, showed a man wearing an orange vest running inside a building and shooting at people with what appears to be an automatic weapon.
In another video posted online, the alleged attacker wearing an orange vest claimed responsibility for the attack and pledged his allegiance to Isis. Muslim communities have been angered by recent incidents of Koran burnings in Sweden.
After the attack, the Crisis Centre had raised the terrorist alert level for Brussels to four, its highest, for the first time since 35 people were killed in the Isis terrorist attacks in 2016. The level for the rest of Belgium was raised to three.
Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson in a press conference on Tuesday said “everything suggests that this is a terrorist attack aimed at Sweden and Swedish citizens”.
Kristersson said the attacker had occasionally stayed in Sweden. “We have to keep track of which people are in Sweden and that they are in Sweden on a legal basis,” he said.
Sweden had raised its security threat assessment to the second-highest level over the summer following several incidents of Koran burnings, sometimes linked to far-right protests.
The European Commission urged its staff to work from home on Tuesday, and some schools in the Belgian capital remained shut. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Together, we stand united against terror.”
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