An attacker stabbed two police officers in the Belgian city of Liege, stealing their weapons and shooting them dead before also gunning down a bystander in an incident authorities are treating as terror-related.
The man, who was later killed by police, approached the two female officers from behind and stabbed them several times on a boulevard in the centre of Belgium's third-largest city, around 30 miles from the German border.
The attacker, identified by public broadcaster RTBF as Benjamin Herman, then shot dead a 22-year-old man, who was sat in a vehicle parked nearby, and took a woman hostage in a school close to where the shooting took place outside a city cafe.
Pupils were moved to safety as a gun battle broke out that sent people in the street racing for cover. Several police were wounded before the attacker was finally killed.
“Liege police intervened. He came out firing at police, wounding a number of them, notably in the legs. He was shot dead,” said Philippe Dulieu, spokesman for the Liege prosecutor's office.
“The event is classed as a terrorist incident.”
Newspaper La Libre Belgique quoted a police source as saying the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar”.
RTBF described the 36-year-old suspect Herman as a petty criminal who had been let out on day-release from a local prison on Monday.
It said investigators were examining whether he converted to Islam and had been radicalised in jail.
However, Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, said it was too early to say what had caused the incident in a statement expressing his condolences to the families of the victims.
A spokeswoman for the city mayor's office, Laurence Comminette, said all children at the school where the gunfight had ended were safe.
Theresa May has denounced the attack, branding it “cowardly”.
“My thoughts are with the victims of today's cowardly attack in Belgium and their grieving families,” the prime minister wrote on Twitter.
“The UK stands resolute with our Belgian allies against terror.”
Belgium has at times struggled with the spectre of Islamist extremism in recent years.
Some 32 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a series of bombings carried out by an Islamic State cell in Brussels in March 2016.
Months earlier in November 2015, a Brussels-based IS group were involved in the attack on Paris that left 130 dead.
Additional reporting by agencies
