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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: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:03PM (2 children)
Barbarians from barbaric cultures?
Actually, those people invented civilization. They were civilized when Europeans were scratching their fleas amid filth. Before even Rome ever had its roads the Persian Empire already had highways.
Now, do Europeans want to invite an Islamic population into their midst, among whom are many who are apt to commit acts of religious-inspired terrorism or will generally subvert hard-won liberties for women and other demographics who have long gotten the short end of the stick? That's a different question.
Calling them uncivilized barbarians is unjust, though, and gets it almost entirely backward, historically speaking.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday May 29 2018, @10:51PM (1 child)
Rome fell in 395 AD, well before Islam was created in 7th century. Persians that you mention were likely Zoroastrians. The science of the Middle East continued several centuries after the area became Muslim and died out afterwards [theguardian.com].
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 30 2018, @10:52AM
You do know people inhabited the Middle East long before Islam, right? They were building cities like Sumer and Babylon, and thus, literally becoming civilized, long, long before Europeans had notions of anything of the sort. The Achaemenid Persians built highways long before the Romans. The pontoon bridge Julius Caesar built to cross the Rhine, so celebrated by Western historians, was actually preceded long before that by the pontoon bridge Xerxes built to cross the Hellespont during his invasion of Greece. Not too shabby for a bunch of barbarians, right?
So the religion they espoused is not really a factor. They were civilized by all the measures by which we judge such things--art, architecture, organization, science, agriculture.
Even if your premise is that Islam renders people uncivilized, that too does not stand up to even passing scrutiny. After Rome fell and Europe descended into the Dark Ages, it was Islam that preserved and expanded upon the knowledge of the ancient world. "Algebra" was an Islamic invention, and would count as a significant contribution to civilization in anyone's book. In fact, up until WWI an Islamic Empire, the Ottomans, were still reckoned as one of the world powers and as modern and civilized as anyone else.
Again, do Christians want an influx of a bunch of Muslims who might erode their cultural traditions and secular freedoms is a different question, but it cannot be in any way claimed or said that people from the Middle East are uncivilized barbarians.
Washington DC delenda est.