26 June, 2017
The Belgian authorities have said the man who detonated a small explosive device in Brussels Central Station on Tuesday evening was a Moroccan national.
An explosion at a train station in Brussels, Belgium, on Tuesday that prompted the station to be evacuated but left no victims injured, is considered a terrorist attack, according to the Belgian federal prosecutor's office.
According to Van der Sypt, the suspect acted alone.
Belgium tightened security even more on Wednesday to counter fears that lone attackers could strike anywhere and at any time, a day after a failed bombing by a man shouting "Allahu akbar" at a Brussels train station put the nation on edge. "It is clear that he wanted to cause more damage than he did".
He lived in Molenbeek - the district which was home to some of the people suspected of carrying out the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016.
Van Der Sypt said the prosecutor's office still had "no idea" of the suspect's identity.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group claimed those attacks, which were carried out by the same cell behind the November 2016 Paris attacks that killed 130 people. In March of a year ago, attacks on the Brussels airport and on the city's metro system killed 32 people.
Brussels police said via Twitter that there was "an incident with an individual at the station".
UKIP MEP David Coburn, who was in the vicinity of the railway station as the incident took place, said he saw people running away "with look of terror on their faces".
The center that monitors security threats in Belgium says the available information so far doesn't yet merit going to the highest possible terror alert level.
Soon after, authorities confirmed that a man, believed to be in his 30s, was in their soldiers immediately after the explosion there on Tuesday night.
"The man then returned to the hall where he rushed to a soldier shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest)".
Security was high around Brussels rail facilities Wednesday the morning after a man blew up an explosive device at the city's Central Station in yet another attack this week in a European capital.
They asked the public to follow police instructions.
The Belgian government is determined to "face a terrorist situation in Europe and not only in Belgium head on, and not to let ourselves be intimidated", Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters after convening his security advisers.
Federal prosecutors, who examined the scene at the Central Station overnight, were due to hold a press conference at 0900 GMT.
