Police had gone to southern Brussels on Tuesday afternoon believing the apartment they were searching was empty, only to have people inside begin shooting at them, according to one senior Belgian counterrorism official.
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At least three Belgian police officers have been injured during a raid on a house in Brussels on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Belgian and French police stormed a house in Brussels while after being fired upon while investigating a link to the November attacks in Paris.
Local media reported that police had surrounded a flat before further shots were fired and the body of one of the shooters was found.
Police have shot and killed one suspect during a Belgian-French anti-terror operation in Brussels.
The area around the raid, near the main north-south railway linking Paris and Amsterdam and a vehicle factory, was sealed off. A helicopter flew overhead and police commandos were deployed.
Police also started letting people back into their homes.
Michel thanked residents for their “composure” as bursts of gunfire erupted in the streets and dozens of heavily-armed police with balaclavas and sub-machineguns sealed off the area.
Belgium’s federal prosecutor, leading the investigation, said one or more suspects barricaded themselves in an apartment after firing through a door at police who arrived to search it.
Officers are said to be acting on a tip off related to last November’s terrorist attacks in Paris when 130 people were murdered by an ISIS cell.
The suspected ringleader of the attacks was a Brussels resident, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
Jihadi brothers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam, 26 and 31, ran a pub in the neighbourhood.
Prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said that when gunshots rang out, many people fled, and it was too early to say whether some were suspects or all were innocent bystanders trying to escape.
The special forces officers still present, their faces covered by hoods, seemed relaxed, said an AFP journalist. Four officers were injured during the exchange of gunfire, and one gunman was killed.
Evacuation… a father carries his child after kids were evacuated from schools located within the security perimeter following a shooting in the southern Forest district of Brussels.
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While he remains very much a wanted man, French sources close to the investigation said Abdeslam was not the target of Tuesday’s raid.
