Five dead, 125 wounded in Belgian shooting

The violence prompted hundreds of shoppers to stampede down old city streets, fleeing explosions and bullets.

It was not immediately clear what motivated the attack in the busy Place Saint-Lambert, the square that forms the main entry point to the city-centre shopping streets of Liege, in eastern Belgium, but interior ministry official Peter Mertens said it did not involve terrorism.

Belgian officials identified the attacker as Norodine Amrani, 33, a Liege resident who they said had served time in jail for offences involving guns, drugs and sexual abuse.

He was among the dead, but Liege prosecutor Danielle Reyn-ders said it was unclear whether he had taken his own life or died by accident. He did not die at the hands of police, she said.

The victims were an 18-month-old girl who died in hospital last night, two boys aged 15 and 17, and a 75-year-old woman.

Liege’s mayor, Willy Demeyer, said the two boys had been taking exams just before being caught in the attack.

Ms Reynders said Amrani had been summoned for police questioning yesterday, but the reason was not clear.

He still had a number of grenades with him when he died, she said.

Officials said Amrani left his home in Liege with a backpack, armed with grenades, a revolver and an assault rifle.

He walked alone to the central square, then got on to a platform that gave him a clear view of the square below, which was decorated with a huge Christmas tree and was crowded with shoppers.

From there, Amrani lobbed three grenades towards a bus shelter, at which 1,800 buses call each day, and opened fire on the crowd.

The explosions sent shards of glass from the bus shelter across a wide area.

“I heard a loud boom,” said witness Dimitri Degryse. “I thought it was something on my car that was broken or something.

“Then a few seconds after, a second boom, and I saw all the glass breaking, I saw people running, screaming.”

Another witness told a local radio station: “He had a bag. He got a grenade out of his bag.

“He threw the grenade at the bus stop. Then he had a Kalashnikov.

“He shot in all directions. Then everyone ran to try to save themselves.

“Then he got a revolver out and put a bullet in his head.”

As soon as the shooting began, hundreds of people fled the square, as well as a Christmas market.

Video from the scene showed people, including a large group of children, sprinting through the city centre to seek cover, some still carrying their shopping bags.

As police hunted for possible accomplices, residents were ordered to stay in their homes or seek shelter in shops or public buildings.

Sirens howled and a police chopper roared overhead as a medical post was set up in the nearby courtyard of the Prince Bishops courthouse. Dozens of emergency vehicles took victims away for treatment.

Police closed off the area but found no accomplices and calm returned to the scene a few hours after.

Place Saint-Lambert and nearby Place du Marché host Liege’s annual Christmas market, which consists of 200 stalls and attracts some 1.5 million visitors a year.

By dusk yesterday, with the Christmas lights gleaming again, King Albert II and Queen Paola came to pay their respects, as did prime minister Elio Di Rupo.

Herman Van Rompuy, a former Belgian prime minister who is now president of the European Council, said he was badly shaken by the attack.

“There is no explanation whatsoever,” Mr Van Rompuy said. “It leaves me perplexed and shocked.”

Although officials excluded terrorism as a motive for Amrani’s attacks, there have been several recent terrorist attacks in Europe.

In Norway last July, far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik went on a bomb and shooting spree in which he killed 77 people, many of them youngsters at an island camp.

He was apparently motivated by a hatred of Muslim immigrants and a deep grudge against the governing Labour Party.

A psychiatric evaluation found him criminally insane, which if upheld by the courts means he would end up in compulsory psychiatric care instead of prison.

Belgium has not been immune to terrorism either. In the early 1980s, a group of heavily armed gunmen dubbed the “mad killers of Brabant” terrorised supermarkets and other stores in the region around Brussels.

The gunmen fired apparently at random at bystanders during a series of robberies between 1982 and 1985, killing 28 people in all.

The scale of the bloodshed, the military weapons used, and the fact that the robberies often involved relatively small amounts of money sparked suspicions that right-wing terrorists may have been behind the attacks.

But there were no claims of responsibility and the identity of the attackers remains unknown to this day.