Belgian authorities have identified the attacker who launched an assault on police officers with a machete on Saturday, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
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Islamic State claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack by a machete-wielding man in Belgium that left two female police officers seriously injured, the group’s Amaq news agency said on Twitter.
Authorities said the man did not carry “explosives or any other weapons”, but they did not about him since he has resided in Belgium since 2012. Following standard practice, prosecutors did not name the attacker but gave his initials as KB.
ISIS’s Amaq news agency said that K.B. was one of the group’s “soldiers” who had taken it upon himself to act “in response to calls to target citizens” of the US -led coalition fighting the radical Islamist group in Iraq and Syria. Prime Minister Charles Michel said the prosecutors had opened an official investigation into what they deemed a case of “attempted terrorist murder”.
Both policewomen were “severely injured in the face and neck” in the attack, the federal prosecutors’ statement said.
“There are indications that the attack may have been inspired by a terrorist motive”, the prosecutors said in a statement.
Islamist bombers killed 32 people in suicide attacks in Brussels in March.
Police secure the area around a police building in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi following a machete attack.
No information was given about the identity of the attacker, who had been shot and killed by police, at the press conference in Brussels which followed a meeting of Belgium’s security services.
However, extra security measures will be introduced to protect police officers, Michel said.
The assailant, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest” in Arabic) during the assault on Saturday afternoon, was shot by a third police officer and later died of his injuries. He had a criminal record but was not known to police for terror-related offenses. Charleroi was used as a base by some of the jihadists involved in that attack, and in the attack on Paris in November 2015.
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Belgium’s unit for terror threat analysis coordination said it would keep the alert level unchanged at level three on a scale of four, meaning an attack is “possible and likely”.
