On Friday, a truck driver broke into the yard of a crowded cafe in central Brussels, lightly injuring six people before fleeing.
The suspect was later arrested in the northern port city of Antwerp and will be questioned, but prosecutors said it was not yet clear whether the crash was intentional or accidental.
“The investigation is still ongoing to ascertain the exact circumstances of the incident. At this stage, the motives of the suspect are not yet known,” said the spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecutor, Flemian Bert.
“The evidence mentions terrorist attacks that were committed in the past, but at the moment it is still not certain that it was an attack and it is possible that it was just an accident,” she told reporters.
After the clash, the Belgian agency Occam, which is responsible for analyzing the terrorist threat, raised the alert level from 2 to 3 in places frequented by people in Brussels within a few hours, and then lowered it “due to encouraging elements.” in an ongoing investigation, a spokesman for AFP said, without giving further details.
“Shortly before 1 a.m., a truck broke into a courtyard on rue Saint-Michel” in the city’s very busy historic centre, “the driver fled in his car” after the collision, a Brussels police spokeswoman told AFP. .
And she confirmed that “emergency services arrived at the scene very quickly and six people who suffered minor injuries were treated at the scene,” and the truck was found shortly thereafter.
The police said that “an investigation is underway and it is too early to comment” on the circumstances of the accident.
“Undoubtedly, the truck was moving very fast” towards the courtyard, where “tourists, city employees and locals visited the capital,” Brussels Mayor Philippe Claus was quoted by Le Soir newspaper as saying.
