Belgium mourns victims of Liege attack
LIEGE, Belgium: Belgium paid emotional tribute to two policewomen and a student shot dead in the eastern city of Liege as investigators probed the gunman’s transition from years of petty criminality to ‘ terrorist murder’.
Prosecutors confirmed they were treating Tuesday’s bloodshed as an act of terrorism, saying the shooter Benjamin Herman was also suspected of another murder the night before.
The Islamic State group claimed one of its ‘soldiers’ was behind the attack, the jihadists’ Amaq propaganda agency said later Wednesday.
Across Belgium, flags were flying at half-mast as Prime Minister Charles Michel led a minute’s silence in Liege where around 1,000 people had gathered to pay their respects, among them many police officers.
Belgium’s national football squad also halted a training session ahead of next month’s World Cup to observe a minute’s silence for the victims.
As police scrambled to unpick the gunman’s motive for the attack, a dramatic account emerged of Tuesday’s bloodshed, which began when the 31-year- old attacked two policewomen with a knife.
After repeatedly stabbing the policewomen, he grabbed their weapons and killed them in a modus operandi which has been encouraged online by extremists from the Islamic State group.
The two victims were identified as Lucile Garcia, 54, who had recently become a grandmother, and Soraya Belkacemi, 44, a mother to 13-year- old twins.
He then shot dead a 22-yearold student sitting in a parked car in the city centre before entering a nearby school where he brief ly took a female cleaner hostage.
Speaking to the Derniere Heure newspaper, the cleaner, who gave her name only as Darifa, said he had asked her whether she was Muslim and if she was fasting for Ramadan.
When she answered ‘yes’ to both questions, Herman said he would not harm her.
She then urged him to give himself up, telling him: “You shouldn’t be here, this is a school, there are children!” after which he burst out for his final confrontation with police. — AFP