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Close call as bomber is shot dead in Brussels station

BRUSSELS — A suitcase bomb packed with nails and gas bottles could have caused heavy casualties, said Belgium’s Prime Minister yesterday, a day after a soldier shot dead a Moroccan national attempting an attack on Brussels’ central station, the latest wave of attacks to hit Europe.

Belgian Army soldiers on patrol inside Central Station in Brussels yesterday. The Belgian capital has been on high alert since suicide bombers struck Zaventem Airport and the Maelbeek metro station near the EU quarter in March last year, killing 32 people and injuring hundreds more. Photo: AP

Belgian Army soldiers on patrol inside Central Station in Brussels yesterday. The Belgian capital has been on high alert since suicide bombers struck Zaventem Airport and the Maelbeek metro station near the EU quarter in March last year, killing 32 people and injuring hundreds more. Photo: AP

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BRUSSELS — A suitcase bomb packed with nails and gas bottles could have caused heavy casualties, said Belgium’s Prime Minister yesterday, a day after a soldier shot dead a Moroccan national attempting an attack on Brussels’ central station, the latest wave of attacks to hit Europe.

The authorities also found signs that the attacker backed the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group. Additionally, investigators found chemical substances and materials that could be used to make explosives and concluded that he probably made the bomb at home.

“We have avoided an attack that could have been a great deal worse,” Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters after a national security council meeting following Tuesday evening’s incident, in which no one else was hurt.

But he said while security would be stepped up, the country’s terror alert level would be kept stable. “We are not allowing ourselves to be intimidated by terrorists,” added Mr Michel.

A security source named the dead man, identified officially only by the initials O Z, as Oussama Zariouh. The 36-year-old had shouted “Allahu Akbar” and tried to detonate a suitcase around a group of passengers at Brussels Central station before a soldier shot him dead on Tuesday. The man had not been wearing a suicide belt.

Belgian federal prosecutor’s spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt said yesterday there were indications that the suspect had “sympathies for the terrorist organisation IS.”

The attacker’s home in Molenbeek was searched and Mr Van Der Sypt said preliminary results “showed that he probably made the bomb there.”

“Both possible chemical substances and materials were found that could serve to make explosives,” he added.

The attacker, from the largely immigrant Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, which has been linked to a number of previous attacks, was not known to police for terrorism offences.

Molenbeek mayor Francoise Schepmans said the man was on the police files over a drugs case last year, and was divorced. Mr Bruno Struys, a Belgian author who writes about Islamist fighters, said that the attacker had lived in Belgium since 2002, was married from 2004 to 2007, and moved to Molenbeek in 2013.

In a statement, the prosecutor’s office said the man entered Brussels Central Station at 8.39pm on Tuesday (local time) and joined a group of passengers in the underground part of the station. At 8.44pm he grabbed his suitcase and, shouting, set off a partial explosion that hurt no one but caused the suitcase to catch fire.

The man then left the burning suitcase and went down to the platform “in pursuit of the station master”.

While he was away, his suitcase, containing nails and gas bottles, exploded for the second time, this time more violently, but still not fully.

The attacker then returned to the hall where he had left the suitcase and rushed at a soldier patrolling the station, shouting “Allahu Akbar”. The soldier opened fire, hitting the man several times and killing him on the spot.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon underlined what a close call passengers had when he said the “big explosion did not happen”. The blast came just after a man mowed down Muslims near a mosque in London, and a suspected Islamist on a terror watchlist rammed a car laden with weapons into a police vehicle in Paris.

Brussels has been on high alert since suicide bombers struck Zaventem Airport and the Maelbeek metro station near the EU quarter in March last year, killing 32 people and injuring hundreds more.

IS claimed the attacks, which were carried out by the same Brussels-based cell behind the November 2015 suicide bombings and shootings in Paris, which left 130 people dead. Belgium will keep its terror alert level at three on a scale of four, said Mr Michel. AGENCIES

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