Two female officers were attacked and wounded by a man wielding a machete and shouting “Allahu Akhbar” outside a police sta.
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Belgian prosecutors said on Sunday that the man, whose initials were givenas K.B, was already known to police. He had a backpack which did not contain any other weapons, Reuters reported. It said a third officer shot the assailant.
One of the injured policewomen had “deep wounds to the face” while the other was slightly injured, Belga news agency said.
The attacker arrived at a checkpoint outside the police station and immediately took a machete out of his bag before lunging at the officer, and repeatedly hacking at her head, witnesses said.
Michel had previously said the attacker has not been identified “but it seems once more to be an attack with a terrorist connotation”.
The attack on Saturday afternoon is being treated as a terrorist incident, notably because the man shouted “Allahu akbar!”.
Michel said prosecutors are expected to release information about the Charleroi attacker later Sunday.
“The federal prosecutor has opened an investigation for attempt of terrorist murder”, prime minister Charles Michel said Sunday morning.
Belgium is still at security alert level three, the second highest level, since the March 22 bombings at a Brussels airport and a subway station which killed 32 people.
The Verviers plotters, two of whom were shot dead, had parts of police uniforms in their possession, and were believed to have been planning to attack a police station.
Mr Michel cut short his holiday in the south of France to hurry back to Brussels following the attack in the southern Belgian city.
“We hope to learn from what happened” in order to fine-tune safety measures as needed, he said.
Numerous terrorists responsible for the Paris attack in November 2015, in which 130 people died, were also residing in Belgium.
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Belgium and its capital Brussels, which houses European Union institutions and the headquarters of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, are now on a security alert level of three out of a maximum four, denoting a “possible and probable” threat. The nation’s risk-analysis agency, OCAM, made a decision to maintain the national threat level at 3, the second-highest, Michel told the press conference.
