Belgian police shoot at car, call bomb squad in Brussels

Belgian police fired a shot at a vehicle in the Brussels district of Molenbeek and called in a bomb squad after the driver claimed to have explosives on board, Belgium’s

Belgian police fired a shot at a vehicle in the Brussels district of Molenbeek and called in a bomb squad after the driver claimed to have explosives on board, Belgium’s federal prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Members of Belgian police special units take part in a mock terrorist attack in a theatre in Brussels on July 4, 2017. (REUTERS File photo)

Police cordoned off the area and told residents to remain indoors while military units checks for explosives, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors said.

“The man was driving suspiciously and failed to stop at a traffic light,” spokeswoman Ine van Wymersch told Reuters.

“When the police arrested him, he claimed to have explosives so not to take any risk, the army has been called in to check.”

She said the man was alone and no one has been injured.

Army bomb disposal experts have been called in and police have sealed off the area, locking a number of people in nearby shops as a precaution, Van Wymersch said.

Brussels police spokeswoman Dorothee Cattrysse said 400 to 500 people were being kept in the stores.

Molenbeek, a poor district of the capital with a large Moroccan Muslim population, gained notoriety after an Islamic State cell based there mounted suicide attacks on Paris in November 2015 that killed 130 people. Associates of that group attacked Brussels itself four months later, killing 32 people.