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A man has shot dead two police officers and a civilian in the eastern Belgian city of Liège.
The gunman took a female cleaner hostage at a school before being killed by police. Two other police officers were also injured.
The man's motive is not yet clear but the incident is being treated as terrorism.
Police sources quoted in local media said the man was heard shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest" in Arabic).
Belgian broadcaster RTBF said the gunman was let out from prison on temporary release on Monday where he had been serving time on drug offenses. It said that he may have been radicalised while in jail.
The shooting unfolded late morning on Tuesday near a cafe in the city centre.
Update: 16:56 UTC
More recent reporting states:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/29/europe/liege-shooting-intl/index.html
The incident occurred at around 10:30 a.m. when an assailant stabbed two policewomen from behind, before stealing their service weapons and using them on the officers, Liege Prosecutor Philippe Dulieu said at a news conference on Tuesday.
After killing the two officers, the attacker continued walking through the street and opened fire on a parked vehicle, fatally wounding the driver inside, Dulieu added.
The gunman also killed a 22-year-old male car passenger on the Boulevard d'Avory, before taking a female cleaner hostage at a nearby high school.
She was released when police shot dead the attacker, who has been named by local media as Belgian national Benjamin Herman.
See also, thanks to C0lo:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday May 29 2018, @02:17PM (20 children)
When are we going to smarten up and treat religion like a mental illness?
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday May 29 2018, @02:23PM (7 children)
What is mental illness here?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @02:47PM
Smartening up?
/ducks
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @02:48PM (5 children)
Sociopathy [wordpress.com] What personality traits would attract a Western born convict to convert to Islam? Where else do we see anti-social behaviours? [thehill.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday May 29 2018, @03:14PM (4 children)
Doesn't sound like you're the same AC. But I wasn't speaking of a single person, but questioning what was the point of the label of "mental illness". Are we supposed to be treating several billion people for the mental illness of being religious?
Second, sociopathy? Big whoop. That word is so devalued it's lost its meaning.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday May 29 2018, @05:44PM (3 children)
Let's just start with acknowledging, which will help.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:49AM (2 children)
Let's look at the assertion again.
It's not just some name-calling, but a call to action. We need to do something about religion, and that something is to "treat" it like a mental illness. There's a huge range of treatment options from self-help books to forced hospitalization (possibly with exotic treatments like electroshock therapy or medication), some which are economically impossible at present with billions of people affected - one would need serious AI to psychoanalyze a few billion people at once.
But there is this bit of nuance before one gets to treatment options. Namely, what is mental illness in the first place. We've gotten away from speaking of mental illness as merely being abnormal (which would be utter fail in the case of religion since that tends to be normal behavior!). So we're left with the idea that mental illness is any mental behavior that causes harm to the beholder or company and doesn't go away quickly on its own. If you get dumped and mope and act up over the weekend, you're not mentally ill. If you're still behaving this way, five years later with numerous bits of evidence that it's causing you and anyone around you harm, you are mentally ill.
Ok, so that's what my idea of mentally ill is. So a bunch of people with closed minds sure looks like mental illness. They're causing harm to themselves and others, check, with those attitudes. Then we move on to treatment. The point of treatment is to make things better not worse. For example, it's not a success, if your treatment turns a normal religious person into an ax murderer for J. R. "Bob" Dobbs. Sorry, Slacktarians, it just isn't.
So the treatment has to improve things. And that's where we get to the chief problem. The primary purpose of religion is to cope with death and a universe with infinite capacity for unfairness. Remove religion, and they'll still need to cope. You need to replace the old crutch with a better one in order for treatment to work. Good luck on that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday May 30 2018, @02:37AM (1 child)
The purpose of religion is for people who know better to gain power over the credulous. All religious leaders are evil, and all believers are victims.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @02:49AM
And I explained what was in it for the credulous. You can't understand religion, if you don't understand why it works.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @03:40PM (3 children)
I've read a lot of anthropological and history books and papers (by non-religious people) that say that religion may be necessary for civilization. Also note a lot of of the modern anti-religion movement, starting in the 1600's, is anti-current dominant religions. Note how much new belief systems are beginning to enter into popular culture like ufo-ism, flat earth, hollow earth, lizardoids from planet whatever. Even science is turning into a religion for some with leaders, priests, meetings, dogma, rituals, followings.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday May 29 2018, @05:47PM (2 children)
Yeah, but you can actually explain to the "science followers" that they're wrong about something. All you need to do is use facts and logic. Calling it a "religion" just because people are beginning to understand why it's so important is disingenuous.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:28PM
Oh my goodness would historians of science beg to differ with you on that! Do a little reading on the theory of ether, then come back and tell us again how willing scientists are to accept ideas that are contrary to their beliefs.
It's OK that you come back chastened. Many have a notion of science such as you have expressed, but these are human beings we're talking about, not Vulcans.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @02:32AM
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 29 2018, @06:03PM (4 children)
When are we going to smarten up and treat religion like a mental illness?
Many of us would be fine if that applied to all religions.
Unfortunately, in the real world, religion only seems to come up when the shooter is brown. That white supremacist, who is more likely to kill you in a terrorist attack if you live in the US, never gets his religion questioned.
(Score: 1) by JustNiz on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:34PM (1 child)
Hey don't speak for me. I think ALL religious people should be considered as both dangerous and at least mentally deficient if not outright mentally ill, and treated as such. Definately including Christians.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:23PM
Then I am dangerous and mentally deficient and mentally ill. Just like Mets fans.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:21PM
Not so. Christians and Christianity in America are criticized on a daily basis. Only, it's been sublimated as dog whistles and cloaked as political speech. If you don't hear it, it's because you're not the target.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @02:47AM
What religion is white supremacy? In the US, they tend to be Christian through to atheist. Sometimes religion is important, but it's usually not a big part of their ideology.
But "when the shooter is brown", meaning an adherent to radical Islam, the religion is a key part of their identity and rationalization for their attacks. Come to think of it, their religion doesn't get questioned then either.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:51PM
As not all mental illness is harmful to others, sometimes quite the opposite - some of the most respected creative literary, artistic, and musical talents have had mental illnesses - some, many, severe enough to lead to their own suicide.
And similarly, not all religions are harmful to others, and for similar reasons. One of the most delightful friends I have is a pagan, and he knows I think it's woo-woo, but we are genuinely the best of friends - nothing he does to satisfy that choice impinges on me, and nothing I do to satisfy my choice to reject impinges on him, and that's how it should be. Not *all* religions. There are exceptions. I have received an unambiguous face-to-face death threat from a work colleague who was a squash player when I told him that I was brought up in a tennis-playing family, but stopped playing because I decided that I didn't like any racket sports. (Yes, I have substituted alternative words in that sentence in order to not invite any more death threats, but I'm happy the analogy is clear, and that you can work out what the sports represent.)
Also, to judge a group for the actions of that group is to judge all individual members of that group for the actions of the whole group, and therefore any actions of any members of that group, which is absurd.
However, and this is a big however, any adherent to a group which names itself something that effectively says "what my group says goes, fuck anything else in the world, local laws included" (which I justify in the case of squash players using the principle that the exception proves the rule), could perhaps take a look at that slogan, and perhaps realise that anyone who judges them as being undesireable merely because of the meaning packed into that slogan might have a point. I don't like your sport because the rules of it tell you to smack balls into a wall, I think that's a perfectly rational stance (and also one that modern tennis doesn't have, even if in Tudor times there were versions of tennis that did have that in the rules).
Holy moley, I'm surprised how much mileage I got from that analogy!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:15PM
Shared narratives that frame events and facts in a matrix of meaning are universal to mankind and rather hard-wired into the human brain. So good luck with that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @12:23AM
It's slowly going away as science gets better. Those out-of-body experiences people experience which make them 100% believe the soul is real and that there are higher planes of existence is just you shutting off the part of your brain which is responsible for determining where your body parts are in relation to all the others. The more than can be explained through science the less needs to be explained through gods.
Also look at patterns. Countries with single rulers tend to have religions with many gods and those with many rulers tend to have religions with a single god. People want balance in their lives.