Belgium to honour two police officers killed in attack

BRUSSELS: Police from across Belgium will pay tribute Tuesday to two female officers killed in a shooting claimed by the Islamic State group in Liege last week.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel will attend the funerals for Lucile Garcia, 54, and Soraya Belkacemi, 44, who were posthumously awarded Belgium’s highest civilian decoration.

“Beyond Liege there is a whole integrated police force that is bruised. No words are sufficient enough to describe the emotion of all our colleagues,” the Liege police force said.

Garcia, 54, had recently become a grandmother while Belkacemi, 44, was a mother to 13-year- old twins.

On Monday, several hundred people turned out for the funeral of attacker Benjamin Herman’s third victim, student Cyril Vangriecken.

Friends and family of the 22-year- old walked behind the hearse dressed in white through the streets of Vottem near Liege ahead of the funeral, also attended by Michel.

The funerals follow Sunday’s procession of nearly 3,000 people who marched to the scene of the attack and laid white roses in memory of the three victims.

Herman carried out his rampage on May 29, repeatedly stabbing Garcia and Belkacemi with a knife before taking their service pistols and shooting them.

He then killed Vangriecken who sat in the passenger seat of a parked car.

The attacker went on to hole up in a nearby school, briefly taking a cleaner hostage before bursting out to confront police and being killed in a hail of bullets.

Belgian police who are treating the murders as a terrorist attack have identified Herman as a drifter who spent a decade in and out of prison for acts of violence and petty crimes.

The Islamic State group claimed one of its ‘soldiers’ was responsible for the latest attack, through its Amaq propaganda agency.

IS said “he led the attack in response to calls to target the countries of the US-led international coalition,” which is fighting the jihadist group, mainly in Syria.

Prosecutors confirmed that Herman’s method of assault was a known ‘ modus operandi’ of IS, which also claimed deadly attacks in Brussels in 2016.

Amateur footage obtained by AFP showed the gunman shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ as he walked through the streets during the rampage. — AFP