Algerian killed in Brussels raid, 2 others held

Police forces seen on Chaussee de Neerstalle, near the site of a shooting in the Rue du Dries-Driesstraat in Forest-Vorst, Brussels, on Wednesday. — AFP

Belgian authorities identified the gunman killed in a raid targeting suspects in the Paris attacks as a 35-year-old Algerian and said the police had detained two others while finding an ISIS flag at the scene.

Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the November 13 shooting and bombing rampage in Paris that killed 130 people was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought as militants in Syria.

On Tuesday, six Belgian and French police officers arrived to search a flat in a Brussels suburb and came under a barrage of automatic weapons fire through a door from at least two people barricaded inside, injuring four officers.

A special forces sniper shot dead gunman Mohamed Belkaid when he tried to fire at the police from a window, prosecutors said.

They said a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a book on Salafism, a radical branch of Islam, were lying next to Belkaid’s body, and that he had been living illegally in Belgium though was known to the police only for a case of theft in 2014.

The apartment in southern Brussels also contained a large cache of ammunition and an ISIS flag, investigating prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said.

Investigators were holding a man admitted to hospital near Brussels with a broken leg that required surgery.

Another suspect was detained for questioning after a further house search near the scene of the shooting.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said on Wednesday that the country would remain on “level three alert”, its second-highest state of security readiness.

“We should bear in mind that level three is not a normal level of threat,” Mr Michel told a press conference.

Brussels was put on the maximum level four for almost a week, with some public spaces locked down, after the attacks in Paris.