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Belgian gunman killed fourth person day before Liege attack: minister
A Belgian convict who shot dead two police officers and a bystander in Liege had killed another person the day before the brutal attack.
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Source: AAP, AFP, SBS
Image: A convict killed two policewomen and a bystander before being shot by police in Liege, Belgium. (AAP)
Belgian police are investigating how a gunman known for contacts with Islamist extremists came to launch a brazen suspected terror attack, shooting dead two female officers with their own weapons before killing a bystander.
The late morning bloodshed shocked the eastern industrial city of Liege when the attacker armed with a knife repeatedly stabbed the two policewomen before using their own firearms to kill them.
Police were scrambling to unpick the motives of the attacker identified as Benjamin Herman, a 36-year-old with a decade spent in and out of prison for acts of violence and petty crimes, who was out of jail on leave when he attacked.
Gunman linked to brutal hammer murder
Special attention is being given to the gruesome murder of an alleged heroin dealer linked to Herman who was bludgeoned to death with a hammer late Monday near the Luxembourg border.
Investigators on Tuesday found the hammer in Herman's car.
Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said police believed the Liege attacker carried out the killing just hours after getting a temporary release from prison.
"He also committed a murder the night before," Jambon told broadcaster RTL.
Jambon confirmed that the fourth victim was a former inmate who did prison time with Herman.
He "had nothing to lose" after "committing a murder (in the night of Monday to Tuesday)," a source close to the investigation told AFP.
Who are the victims?
As well as the two policewomen, the attacker also shot dead a 22-year-old student sitting in a parked car in central Liege. He then took a female cleaner hostage in the nearby Leonie de Waha school, a public institution with several hundred students aged from two to 18.
The two murdered police officers were identified as Lucile Garcia, 53, who had recently become a grandmother, and Soraya Belkacemi, 45, a mother to 13-year-old twins.
Amateur footage obtained by AFP showed the gunman shouting "Allahu Akbar" (Arabic for "God is greatest") as he walked through the Liege streets during the rampage.
In another video, the suspect darts out of a school where he had holed up into a short and intense burst of police gunfire, after which the man collapses to the ground.
A convict killed two policewomen and a bystander before being shot by police in Liege, Belgium. Source: AAP
Debate about prison policy
Debate in Belgium was swirling on the country's prison policy with reports that Herman had repeatedly blown the conditions of his temporary leave from jail ahead of his full release set for 2020.
"I feel responsible because I have responsibility for prisons," Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens told RTBF radio.
Liege, a major city in Belgium's blighted rustbelt, was the scene of another bloody shootout in 2011 when a former convict killed six people and wounded more than 120 before turning the gun on himself.
Minister Jambon said an investigation has been launched into the latest incident, including the circumstances surrounding Herman's release from prison.
"It's really an isolated case. He wasn't part of a network, he did not receive instructions from anyone else, so there is no need to raise the terror threat alert level," Jambon said, adding that investigators have no precise information that any other attacks might have been likely.
Liege police on Tuesday said it was "clear that the assassin's objective was to attack the police" and that one of the four officers wounded had suffered a serious leg injury.
Prime Minister Charles Michel denounced what he called the "cowardly and blind violence" of Tuesday's attack.
