Around 2 a.m. local time, the perpetrators reportedly rammed a auto through barricades at Belgium’s national crime institute and then set fire to a lab, Teri Shultz reports for NPR from Brussels.
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A vehicle rammed through barriers around 3am local time.
Belgium’s police and army have been deployed in large numbers since the suicide bomb attacks in Paris last November that left 130 dead.
No one was injured, but the state broadcaster RTBF said the damage is significant outside the institute, which advises Belgium’s justice officials in their investigations.
Ine Van Wymersch said there were no immediate indications that the fire at the institute, which was empty at the time, was a militant attack although nothing had been ruled out.
“Five people were arrested in the immediate neighborhood”, Van Wymersch told reporters. It comes as Belgium remains on high alert following the devastating Islamic State-claimed suicide attacks on the city’s airport and metro in March.
Investigators said that the suspected arsonists lit the laboratory on fire that is used to analyse DNA samples found at crime scenes. There have been no casualties reported so far, said Pierre Meys, spokesman of the Brussels fire brigade.
A vehicle carrying two people is said to have forced its way onto the site in northern Brussels before the attackers scaled a ladder and launched an arson attack.
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The duo are then said to have set off the bomb before torching their vehicle. The institute carries out forensic examinations in criminal cases and is connected with the Belgian federal justice ministry.
