ISIL claims Belgian attack as city mourns

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The ISIL has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack in the Belgian city of Liege, which killed four people, Amaq News Agency monitoring site reported on Wednesday.

The Amaq is a news outlet linked to the ISIL, and is often the "first point of publication for claims of responsibility by the group." According to its website, the man who killed four people in Liege was a "soldier of the caliphate."

The attacker, who also injured four other police officers, was later shot dead by police. It has previously claimed similar “lone wolf” acts thought to be Islamist-inspired, often without providing evidence.

Classmates of killed 22-year old student Cyril Vangriecken take part in a tribute ceremony for the victims of a shooting in Liege. /VCG Photo

Belgian authorities meanwhile faced questions over why the attacker, a prison inmate who was suspected of links to radical Islamists in jail, was let out for a day.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon said authorities were still examining the motives of Benjamin Herman, a 31-year-old Belgian drug dealer who had been in jail for years but was let out for two days on Monday to prepare for an eventual release in 2020.

Herman had contact with Islamist radicals in jail in 2016 and early 2017. He also appeared to have followed online exhortations from ISIL to stab police officers and use their service weapons to shoot others, prosecutors said.

A cleaning woman at the school who found herself “nose to face with the killer” told public broadcaster RTBF that he spared her because she was Muslim.

While he briefly held her hostage, he told her he wanted the police to “writhe; I want to make them stew”.

Justice Minister Koen Geens told RTBF radio he was having pangs of conscience over whether the man should have been allowed the furlough.

Still reeling from the attack, residents of Belgium’s third biggest city lay flowers and candles at the scene of the shooting on Wednesday, and officials held a moment of silence.

Flowers are laid in front of Liege police headquarters in tribute to victims of a shooting in Liege. /VCG Photo

“We had all of the little ones from the high school who were evacuated,” said an emotional nursery school teacher, Joelle Chalon. “I walk this way to work every day.”

Authorities praised the quick-wittedness of the cafe owner outside whose bar Herman had killed the two policewomen. By the time the killer, wielding two police pistols, came in looking for more victims, the cafe proprietor had got all of his customers into hiding.

Jambon described Herman as a psychologically unstable man who might have been on drugs, pointing to his murder of an acquaintance 50 km away on Monday night.

“There are signs he was radicalized in prison but is it that radicalization which drove him to commit these acts?” Jambon said, adding that although Herman was flagged up in security reports in 2016 and early 2017, he had been a fringe figure.

Source(s): Reuters ,Xinhua News Agency