Two female officers were attacked and wounded by a man wielding a machete and shouting “Allahu Akhbar” outside the main police station in the Belgian city of Charleroi on Saturday, police said.
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The Belgian security officials said that the attacker is recognized as a 33-year-old Algerian, who migrated into Belgium in 2012.
The junior minister for migration, Theo Francken, said K.B. had been living illegally in Belgium and had “twice been ordered to leave the country”. The government didn’t immediately confirm the reports.
The assailant shouted “Allahu Akbar”, Arabic for “God is great”, during the machete attack outside police headquarters in Charleroi, about 30 miles (50 km) south of Brussels.
“Since there are indications that the attack may have been inspired by a terrorist motive, the federal prosecutor’s office made a decision to take over the investigation from the district prosecutor’s office of Charleroi”, the federal office said.
The man was shot by a third officer on the scene and later died in hospital.
IS-linked Amaq Agency said that Saturday’s machete attack in Belgian city of Charleroi was claimed by ISIS.
Prosecutors searched two houses in Charleroi after the attack but did not provide details.
“There are indications that the attack may have been inspired by a terrorist motive”, prosecutors said in a statement. Again, the perpetrator of an act of terror turned out to be known to local police, but the attacker was said to have been involved in criminal, not nationalistic or terrorist, attacks.
In March’s Brussels attacks, three men of North African descent carried out a triple suicide bombing on Brussels airport and the Maalbeek metro station, leaving 32 dead.
“We maintain cool heads and blood”, added the premier, who said unspecified measures would be taken to bolster security for police while noting that Belgium was confronting a similar threat to that faced by its European neighbors.
Police officers check the identification of a man near the police headquarters in Charleroi after the machete attack on August 6. Many of those who carried out attacks in Paris in November, which killed 130 people, were based in Belgium.
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“We don’t know if this is the action of a lone wolf”, Jambon told RTL. No additional weapons or explosives were found in his rucksack, authorities said.
