15 March 2016
One suspect dead, four officers injured in Brussels terrorism raid
http://www.dpa-international.com/news/top_stories/one-suspect-dead-four-officers-injured-in-brussels-terrorism-raid-a-48644543.html Brussels (dpa) - A suspect was killed and four police officers injured Tuesday following a raid related to the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris last year, local media reported.
Belgium has helped France investigate the November attacks, as several of the suspected attackers in Paris had links to the neighbouring country. The violence in the French capital left 130 people dead and hundreds injured.
Several suspects are still being sought, most notably Salah Abdeslam, a Frenchman who had lived in Brussels and is suspected of having joined his brother in targeting restaurants and bars during the Paris killings.
But Belgian media reported that the police operation carried out Tuesday in the southern Brussels neighbourhood of Forest had not targeted Abdeslam. Instead, it had focused on the "entourage" of one of the 11 people who were arrested on terrorism charges in Belgium following the Paris attacks, the newspaper Le Soir wrote.
Belgian and French investigators jointly carried out the raid, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
Federal prosecution spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt told the VRT broadcaster and the Belga news agency that the first shots were fired from inside the targeted apartment right after police rang the bell.
The investigators were not expecting to find anyone at the apartment, which had been rented under a false name, RTBF said.
After the shootout, one suspect with at least one Kalashnikov rifle barricaded himself in the apartment, while a second hid in a vacant lot nearby, according to Le Soir.
A police dog equipped with a video camera was sent into the vacant lot, but had to turn around after being shot at by the suspect, the daily wrote.
Several rounds of gunfire were heard in the area cordoned off around the apartment throughout Tuesday afternoon, with the number of reported injuries steadily rising. The police operation was still ongoing as night fell on the Belgian capital.
In the early evening, Van Der Sypt told Belga that a body was found in the apartment after police made their way inside. It was not Abdeslam, he added. It was unclear if one or two other suspects were still at large, Belgian media said.
Journalists on the scene also reported seeing smoke coming out of a building in the sealed-off area. RTBF said that one suspect had been equipped with teargas.
People in childcare centres, schools and an Audi factory nearby were initially told to stay indoors, but the children were later evacuated.
Resident Audrey Simonian told dpa that she had been waiting at police barriers since 5:30 pm (1630 GMT) to get back to home, where her child was with a babysitter.
"I am surprised. Normally this is a calm, family-friendly neighbourhood," she said.
