by Philip Blenkinsop, Robert-Jan Bartunek and Clement Rossignol
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgian police Tuesday killed a suspect armed with an assault rifle during a search conducted in Forest, a town in the Brussels area, in connection with the attacks in Paris on 13 November, announced the Belgian federal prosecutor.
When the Belgian and French police arrived to conduct a search they thought was a routine operation in an apartment on a street in the town south of the Belgian capital, one or more people opened fire, according to the account given by prosecutors in a statement.
Some of the people involved in the attacks of 13 November in Paris and Saint-Denis, lived or had contacts in Brussels.
three policemen, including a French police, were wounded and a fourth was shot during a subsequent exchange of fire.
When, three hours after the first search, the police stormed the building, they killed an unidentified man wielding a Kalashnikov weapon used by some of the perpetrators of the November 13 claimed by the Islamic State.
the Belgian police are still operations in Brussels, told Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told a news conference.
in the evening, the police searched other buildings in Forest, but did not confirm the information from the Belgian press that two other suspects are being sought.
“We have escaped a tragedy,” said Charles Michel. He said one of the wounded policemen was seriously injured.
“COINCIDENCE”
The presence of French forces on the scene was a “coincidence” and not an indication that the initial search is to produce a breakthrough in the investigation, said the ministers who attended the press conference.
the shooting triggered the closure of a large area around the house in question, Dries in the street, which lasted four hours and then the police began to escort the children who were in school after nightfall and about fifty people who had taken refuge in a supermarket.
the concerned residents were allowed to return home after the cord.
Around 5:00 p.m. (1600 GMT), Reuters journalists have heard gunfire when police commandos were present in the street which hosted the operation. According to the Belgian daily La DH, the suspect “neutralized” was spotted by a helicopter in a garden close to the house.
The Belgian security forces track down several suspects for four months of the attacks of 13 November in Paris and around the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, who made 130 dead. The investigation revealed that the attacks were prepared in Brussels.
One of the main suspects on the run, Salah Abdeslam, was the subject of a routine traffic stop while returning Belgium November 14 morning. His name had not yet appeared. He would then hid for three weeks in a Brussels apartment before hurriedly from early December, wrote in February DH.
According to RTBF, citing French police sources, Abdeslam n ‘ was not the target of the operation launched Tuesday.
(Henri-Pierre André, Jean-Stéphane Brosse and Danielle Rouquié for the french service)
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