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A Moroccan national who attempted an attack on Central Station in Brussels is suspected of supporting the Islamic State (IS) group, prosecutors have said, a day after the man tried to detonate a suitcase bomb packed with nails and gas bottles.
Key points:
- Suspect lay unattended after shooting for fears he had explosives
- The incident was being treated as a terrorist attack
- People standing near explosion were not injured
Investigators have said he likely made the bomb at his home in the Brussels borough of Molenbeek, a known hotbed of radicalised Muslims.
The home was raided overnight.
"There are also indications that the suspect had sympathies for the terrorist organisation IS," the prosecutors said in a statement.
While little is known about the dead man, who was shot by a soldier on Tuesday evening (local time), any confirmed militant links could fit it into a pattern of recent attacks in European cities claimed by IS, including in London, Paris and Berlin.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Molenbeek, a poor borough with a big Moroccan Muslim population, gained notoriety after an Islamic State cell based there mounted suicide attacks on Paris in November 2015 that killed 130 people.
Associates of that group attacked Brussels itself four months later, killing 34 people.
How the attack unfolded
Counter-terrorism prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt said the man, who a security source named as Oussama Zariouh and was identified officially as OZ, was a 36-year-old Moroccan citizen.
The prosecutor's office said the man entered the Brussels Central Station at 8:39pm local time on Tuesday and joined a group of passengers in the underground part of the station.
At 8:44pm he grabbed his suitcase and, shouting, set off a partial explosion which hurt no one but caused the suitcase to catch fire.
Recent terror attacks in Europe:
The man then left the burning suitcase and went down to the platform "in pursuit of the station master". While he was away, his suitcase, containing nails and gas bottles, exploded for the second time, this time more violently, but still not fully.
The man then returned to the hall where he left the suitcase and rushed at a soldier patrolling the station, shouting "Allahu akbar". The soldier opened fire, hitting the man several times and killing him on the spot.
Bomb disposal experts checked the body and found he was not carrying more explosives.
Witness Nicolas Van Herrewegen, a rail worker, said: "He was talking about the jihadists and all that and then at some point he shouted: 'Allahu akbar' and blew up the little suitcase he had next to him. People just took off."
Remy Bonnaffe, a 23-year-old lawyer who was waiting for a train home, said: "I think we had some luck tonight."
Interest in selfies and Celine Dion
Molenbeek Mayor Francoise Schepmans told reporters Zariouh was on police files over a drug case last year and was divorced.
Bruno Struys, a Belgian author who writes on Islamist militants, said Zariouh had lived in Belgium since 2002, was married from 2004-2007 and moved to Molenbeek in 2013.
His Facebook page, which had not been updated in a year, showed a man in his 30s posing regularly for selfies, alone at the wheel of the same car.
It said he was self-employed, single, came from Nador on Morocco's Mediterranean coast and graduated from the nearby university at Oujda in 2002.
Posts on the page showed an interest in Islamic charity but no obvious support for militant organisations.
Along with Arab musicians, he posted a liking for Canadian pop diva Celine Dion.
Belgium vows: 'We will not be intimidated'
Prime Minister Charles Michel insisted that Belgium, which has been the most fertile European recruiting ground for IS in Syria and Iraq, would not bow to threats that have seen combat troops become a permanent fixture at public spaces in Brussels.
"We will not let ourselves be intimidated," Mr Michel said. "We will go on living our lives as normal."
The Belgian capital, home to the headquarters of NATO and the European Union, took a heavy hit to its tourist industry after last year's deadly attacks at Brussels airport and in the Brussels metro.
In Tuesday's incident, visitors and residents out enjoying a hot summer's evening on the ornate Renaissance town square, the Grand Place, close to Central Station, were cleared quickly away by police.
Smoke billowed through the 1930s station's marble halls, sending people fleeing, well aware of last year's attacks at Brussels airport and on the metro, as well as a string of Islamic State-inspired assaults, most recently in Britain.
"Such isolated acts will continue in Brussels, in Paris and elsewhere. It's inevitable," Brussels security consultant Claude Moniquet, a former French agent, told broadcaster RTL.
With Islamic State under pressure in Syria, attacks in Europe may increase, though many would be by "amateurs".
Reuters
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, terrorism, belgium