Liege Shooting: 2 Police Officers, One Civilian Killed, Gunman Neutralized

A Belgium gunman shot and killed three people, including two police officers, and injured two others near a coffee shop in Liega, about 60 miles east of Brussels, at 10.30 a.m. local time (4.30 a.m. EDT) on Tuesday morning. A passenger in a nearby car was the third person to be killed.

The wounded were also identified as police officers. The police told BBC the gunman fled the coffee shop, ran into nearby Waha High School and took a cleaning woman hostage, but was later shot and killed. Though the incident took place in the school, all the students were safe and nobody was injured.

The gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar,” translated as “God is great” in Arabic, La Libre Belgique, a daily newspaper in Belgium, reported.

Though the anti-terror police were summoned to the scene, the Federal Prosecutor's Office declined to confirm if the incident was terror related. The gunman has not been identified.

“Terrorism is one of the questions on the table but for the moment all scenarios are open,” spokesman of the terrorism response center said.

Officials have not confirmed the motive behind the attack.

Footage on social media showed people fleeing from the scene to safety as several gunshots rang out and police converged on the coffee shop.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon said on Twitter that Belgium's anti-terrorist crisis center was monitoring the situation.

“Our thoughts are with the victims of this serious act in Liege. We are currently assessing what happened exactly,” he tweeted.

“Avroy Boulevard shooting is over. Schoolchildren in the neighborhood are safe and not injured. Three people lost their lives — two policemen and the passenger of a car. The attacker was shot dead,” the city’s official Twitter account posted.

“I am in Avenue Rogier in Liege, the whole neighborhood is blocked, as well as the boulevard Piercot. There are police everywhere and running people,” a witness told Belgium’s RTL news website, the Express reported.

Belgium remained on high alert since Brussels-based militants were involved in the Paris attack that killed 130 people in 2015 and the Brussels attack in 2016 in which 32 died.

Liege, Belgium's third-largest city, was also hit by a horrifying murder-suicide bomb-and-gun attack in 2011, which left six dead and over 100 injured.