By Police1 Staff
LIEGE, Belgium — A knife-wielding man stabbed two officers, stole their service weapons and fatally shot them and a bystander in Belgium.
Liege Police Chief Christian Beaupere said Tuesday that four other officers were wounded in the attack, one of them seriously injured with a severed femoral artery, the Associated Press reports. Justice Minister Koen Geens said the assailant was killed by police.
Liege prosecutors’ spokesman Philippe Dulieu said the man crept up behind the two officers and stabbed them several times before stealing their service weapons and shooting them to death.
Dulieu said the assailant later fatally shot a 22-year-old man who was leaving a parking place near a high school. The assailant then took a woman hostage inside the school.
“Liege police intervened. He came out firing at police, wounding a number of them, notably in the legs. He was shot dead,” the spokesman said.
Geens said the assailant was released from prison on a two-day leave Monday prior to the attack. He also described him as a multiple repeat offender who had been incarcerated since 2003.
Prosecutors said they feared the attack could be terror-related. But Yves Stevens of Belgium’s federal crisis center said there isn’t indication that the incident is terror-related and that there’s no reason to raise the national terror threat level at this time.
Authorities are continuing to investigate the attack.
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