BRUSSELS – Belgian police have killed a suspect armed
with an assault rifle after four officers were wounded in a raid on a Brussels
apartment linked to investigations into November’s Islamist attacks in Paris,
prosecutors said.

One or more people opened fire on Belgian and French
police officers when they went to conduct what they had expected to be a
routine search of an apartment in a suburban side street in the south of the
Belgian capital. Some of those involved in the November 13 bombings and
shootings lived or were based in the city.

Three officers, including a French policewoman, were
wounded and a fourth was hurt during a subsequent exchange of fire. When police
stormed the building three hours after the first raid, they killed an
unidentified individual wielding a Kalashnikov — a gun used by some of the
Islamic State militants in Paris.

Prime Minister Charles Michel and members of his
government told a news conference that police operations were continuing.
Police searched more nearby buildings late in the evening in the southern
Brussels borough of Forest but did not confirm Belgian media reports that they
were hunting two further suspects.

“We have escaped a tragedy,” Michel said,
noting that none of the four wounded police officers was seriously hurt.

Ministers said the presence of French police at the
scene was a “coincidence” not an indication that the initial search
had been expected to provide a major break in the case.

The shooting prompted a lockdown in a wide area around
the house in the rue du Dries that lasted for hours until police began
escorting children from schools and kindergartens after dark, and some 50 who
had taken shelter in a supermarket.

Residents were allowed to return to homes behind the
cordon.

BELGIAN
CONNECTION

Investigators believe much of the planning and
preparation for the November bombing and shooting rampage in Paris was
conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought
in Syria for Islamic State.

The attack strained relations between Brussels and
Paris, with French officials suggesting Belgium was lax in monitoring the
activities of hundreds of militants returned from Syria.

Belgian security forces have been actively hunting
suspects and associates of the militants involved in the Paris attacks.

One of the prime suspects, 26-year-old Brussels-based
Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, is still on the run. He left Paris hours after his
brother blew himself up outside a cafe. Belgian authorities are holding 10
people who have been arrested in the months since the attacks, mostly for
helping Abdeslam.

Belgian public television quoted French police sources
as saying Abdeslam had not been the target of Tuesday’s raid.

Brussels, headquarters of the European Union as well as
Western military alliance NATO, was entirely locked down for days shortly after
the Paris attacks for fear of a major incident there. Brussels has maintained a
high state of security alert since then, with military patrols a regular sight.

Soldiers were on streets in central Brussels on Tuesday
as the operation continued.

Belgium, with a Muslim population of about 5 percent
among its 11 million people, has the highest rate in Europe of citizens joining
Islamist militants in Syria.

– Reuters