SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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