Manhunt in Belgium after Palestinian asylum seeker ‘threatens to die a martyr by blowing himself up after hearing his entire family had been killed in Gaza’

• This is a breaking news story, more to follow 

Belgian police are on the hunt for a Palestinian asylum seeker who threatened to blow himself up after hearing that his entire family had been killed in Gaza. 

All police units across Belgium are seeking 23-year-old Mohammed A., who said on Tuesday that he wants to ‘die as a martyr by explosion’ after hearing that his family had been killed. 

He reportedly applied for asylum on September 26, and was told he had to turn up again the following day, but failed to do so. 

A spokesperson for the Brussels public prosecutor’s office said that it was aware of the threats allegedly made by Mohammed A.: ‘The person of Palestinian origin is currently being actively traced. In the interest of the investigation, no further comment will be made.’

No additional security measures were taken at Brussels Airport, or the Jewish Institution in Antwerp, following the news of the manhunt. 

The hunt for Mohammed A. comes just a day before all 27 EU leaders are due to gather in Brussels for a two-day summit to discuss, among other things, the war between Israel and Hamas. 

His threats were made just a week after two Swedish football fans were killed, while a third was wounded, by an ISIS fanatic armed with an automatic rifle, in what the attacker said was revenge for the death of a six-year-old Palestinian boy in the US. 

All police units in Belgium are on the lookout for Mohammed A., who threatened to ‘martyr’ himself

READ MORE HERE:  Illinois landlord who stabbed boy, six, to death was’ paranoid about Hamas’ 

Belgium’s terror treat level is still at ‘serious’, the second-highest level, a week after after armed police shot Tunisian suspect Abdesalem Lassoued, 45, dead cornered inside a café in the Brussels neighbourhood of Schaerbeek. 

He opened fire on a group of Swedish football fans in a taxi passing through Boulevard d’Ypres just a few minutes north of the city’s famous Grand Plaza ahead of Belgium’s Euro 2024 qualifier against Sweden.  

Several people fled into an apartment building after hearing the gunshots, but Lassoued followed them and opened fire again in the entrance hall in an attack he said was to avenge the killing of a six-year-old US-Palestinian boy. 

Lassoued unsuccessfully sought asylum in Belgium in 2019, and had been illegally living in the country for several years since then.  

Belgian media reported on Wednesday that Lassoued’s alleged accomplice was arrested while carrying the weapon used to slaughter the Swedish football fans. 

‘He will be interrogated in connection with his possible involvement with the weapon used by Abdesalem Lassoued,’ the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.  

Later today, the suspect will be brought before the investigating judge, with a view to his further arrest. 

Politico reported that Lassoued was known to authorities as someone with a ‘radicalised profile’ from as early as 2016. 

Video shows Abdesalem Lassoued dressed in a fluorescent orange jacket and carrying a gun driving through the streets of Brussels last night 

While the 45-year-old had no prior convictions in Belgium, he was known to law enforcement for a range of ‘suspicious activities,’ including suspected human trafficking and threatening the security of the state, Belgium’s Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said last week. 

The minister tried defending Belgium’s intelligence services at the time, saying: ‘The information was verified, nothing else could be done.’

Van Quickenborne argued that intelligence services were at the time swamped with ‘dozens of reports a day of that nature.’

‘Although he was known to law enforcement, there was no concrete indication of his radicalisation — that’s why he was not on the OCAD [terrorist] watchlist,’ the minister said.
Belgium has suffered a series of terrorist attacks in recent years – all of it related to Islamist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

Eight men have just been tried for their connections to the 2016 suicide bombings that killed 32 people and wounded hundreds at Brussels airport and a subway station.

Local media have named the suspect as 45-year-old Abdesalem Lassoued (pictured)

View of the crime scene on the aftermath of the shooting in Brussels on Tuesday

Forensic investigators at the scene in Brussels were two people were shot dead by a gunman

In September, a Brussels court handed out sentences ranging up to life in prison to eight men for the jihadist bombings in Brussels.

French citizen Salah Abdeslam and Belgian-Moroccan Mohamed Abrini – already sentenced to life in jail by France for the November 2015 massacre in Paris – were the highest-profile of six defendants found guilty of murder in July.

Abrini, who was one of the intended bombers but decided not to blow himself up at the last moment, was given a 30-year jail term.

The court ruled not to give Abdeslam an additional term after he was sentenced in Belgium to 20 years in 2018 over a shootout.

The attacks – near the headquarters of both NATO and the EU – were part of a wave of attacks claimed by the Islamic State group in Europe.

More to follow. 

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