Prosecutors later identified the man as a 33-year-old Algerian who was known to police for criminal acts, but not terrorism.
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Belgian officials said the local prosecutor in Charleroi and federal police are investigating the incident.
A machete-wielding man who wounded two policewomen on August 6, in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi has died after being shot by officers.
A woman stands at the site where a machete-wielding man injured two female police officers.
On Sunday, the Charleroi police department requested that reporters not reveal the officers’ identities. He was carrying a rucksack but not explosives or other weapons were found.
They are mainly carried by asylum seekers, who had recently arrived in Europe from the Middle East or Western Asia, with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) claiming responsibility for numerous incidents.
According to RTBF state broadcasting, one officer suffered severe injuries to her face while her colleague was slightly injured. The area was evacuated and the suspect, identified as a man of Turkish origin aged around 20, was detained soon afterwards.
A machete attack on a Belgium police station yesterday is being treated as a terror attack, the country’s prime minister has said.
Mr Michel’s spokesman, Barend Leyts, said the independent OCAM agency, which assesses risks to Belgium’s internal security, was consulted and chose to keep the current threat level unchanged.
A statement by the Islamic State-affiliated Aamaq news agency, posted on Sunday on an Isis-linked Twitter account, said the attack on the officers was in response to the “crusader coalition’s” military campaign against Islamic State and its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria. “That’s the trap that’s been set for us”, he told a news conference.
Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Jan Jambon called the attack a “heinous act” and offered his support to the victims in a tweet.
The assailant was shot and later confirmed dead by police.
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 viewed as “possible and likely”.
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Belgium has been at Level 3 on a four-point terrorism alert scale since the attacks in Paris on November 13 that killed 130 victims.
