On Tuesday (October 17) the Belgian authorities confirmed that a man police shot outside a café in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels is the suspect involved in the terrorist attack in Brussels on Monday night. He died of his injuries shortly afterwards in hospital, they stated.

Police had been hunting for the suspect since Monday night after he carried out an attack in Brussels resulting in the deaths of two Swedish football fans and resulting in a third man being seriously injured. A manhunt began on Monday and continued into Tuesday morning. It had centered on the Schaerbeek area because it was where the suspect was living, reported Belgian state broadcaster VRT.

According to the German press agency dpa, a witness called police after he had spotted the suspect sitting at a café in the north of the city. Prosecutors say they recovered a "military weapon" from the suspect, which was the automatic rifle involved in Monday's attack.

Police tried to detain the suspect at the café, but their attempts resulted in a shoot out, during which, reports VRT, the suspect was shot in the chest.

Police report 'links to people smuggling'

The man, reported to be a 45-year-old Tunisian man calling himself Abdesalem Al Guilani, had applied for asylum in November 2019, the Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne told the media. His asylum claim was rejected in 2020. "Shortly afterwards he disappeared from the radar," Belgian Asylum Secretary Nicole de Moor told VRT. "At no time did he spend time in a Belgian asylum center," de Moor added. In February 2021, VRT reports, the suspect was issued with an order to leave the country.

Also read: Germany prepares to widen fixed border checks

He was living in Belgium without papers, say public prosecutors. He was "known to police in connection with people-smuggling and illegal residence in Belgium," reported the British daily newspaper The Guardian.

The suspect is also understood to have spent time in Italy. According to the Guardian, a photo on his Facebook profile, which has now been taken down, showed him in Genoa in 2021. Italy’s security service and police also have records of him in Bologna in 2016 and they are now, according to the Guardian, "investigating potential links between the man and others in Italy." According to dpa, Belgium was first notified of the suspect’s radical views by a "foreign intelligence service" in 2016. Now questions are being asked about whether Belgium could have done more to prevent the attack.

VRT also report that the suspect is alleged to have threatened a resident of a Belgian asylum center earlier this year. The alleged victim told the authorities that the suspect had already been convicted in Tunisia for terrorism offenses, but that proved untrue. However, according to VRT, the suspect had been convicted in Tunisia of "other offenses."

Motives for the attack?

A person resembling the attacker identified himself in a video posted to social media after the attack claiming to be a member of Islamic State (IS) and saying the attack was "revenge." VRT has been unable to verify the footage, they report.

Police are now trying to identify whether the man acted alone or had accomplices, report Belgian media. Motives for the attack are also still being investigated. Lines of inquiry include possible links between the war in the Middle East and his crime, reports dpa. Prosecutors have already found a "number of social media posts published by the suspect with statements of support for the Palestinian people," wrote the press agency.

The victims’ Swedish citizenship could also have motivated the attacker, think prosecutors. Sweden and Denmark were the site of a series of Koran burnings over the summer which triggered angry reactions among many in the Muslim community. And raised the terror threat alert in both countries.

The attack took place near a station about five miles from the football stadium where Sweden and Belgium were playing an international match. The Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he thought the attacker had also visited Sweden and he believed the fans were targeted because of their nationality. In videos shot by passers-by and aired on some media, the gunman is using an automatic rifle and used a scooter to flee the scene after firing shots near a station.

'This is a time for more security, we can't be naive'

"Two Swedes were shot dead in cold blood," Kristersson said to a press conference on Tuesday morning in Stockholm. A third Swedish citizen is also seriously injured and in hospital. "Everything indicates that it was a terror attack aimed at Sweden and Swedish citizens just because they are Swedish," explained the Prime Minister. He added that he would be bolstering security at the borders and called on the EU to do the same.

Also read: Refugees, burning holy books and a 'complex security situation'

"This is a time for more security; we can’t be naive," added Kristersson. Security in the Belgian capital has already been raised from level two to level four, the highest level.

Other leaders around Europe have been reacting to the news. France’s President Emmanuel Macron, whose own country experienced a knife attack in a school at the end of last week which resulted in one teacher dead and three others wounded, wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) "We are thinking of the victims of this cowardly attack. We share the shock with our Belgian and Swedish friends."

French knife attack also being linked to Islamic terrorism

France is already deploying 7,000 additional military personnel on its streets after the knife attack last week in Arras. Macron described the attack as an act of "barbaric Islamic terrorism." The latest attack in Arras, confirmed a French prosecutor on Tuesday, was carried out by a 20-year-old man who also had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, reported the news agency Reuters.

On Tuesday, Macron said during a visit to Albania that Europe was seeing a "rise of Islamist terrorism." Macron declared that "all European states are vulnerable." The supect responsible for the knife attack in France is reported to have arrived in France at the age of five. The 20-year-old was born in Russia’s North Caucasus mainly Muslim region.

According to the French news agency AFP, he was already on a French national register as a potential security threat and under surveillance by France’s domestic intelligence agendy, the GSI. His father who was also on the list was deported in 2018, reports AFP.

Macron has already called on French police to comb through the files of all people deemed to have been radicalized who could be deported. According to the French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, at least 193 cases will be reexamined in France.

According to an aide of Macron, reported AFP, the French President told Darmanin to focus mainly on "young men between the ages of 16 and 25 from the Caucasus."

Kristersson said that all countries in the European Union needed to ensure that "dangerous individuals could not stay illegally within the region," reported Reuters. The Swedish Security Services SAPO, confirmed on Monday, following the attacks that the threat level to Sweden had changed and increased. They said they thought the threat level would remain high for "a considerable period."

With Reuters, AFP, dpa