Gunman on run after attack on army barracks in Belgium

Balaclava-wearing man tried to force a car through gates of barracks near Namur but fled after exchange of fire

Police patrol the perimeter of the army barracks in Flawinne, Belgium. 

A manhunt is under way in Belgium after a dozen shots were fired when a masked gunman tried to ram a car through the gates of a military barracks.

No one was injured and the attacker fled in the car after soldiers from the barracks in Flawinne, a suburb of Namur, opened fire on the vehicle.

The vehicle’s owner is said to have been identified after the car was found in Belgrade, near Flawinne. Bomb squad officials were on the scene after witnesses told Belgian media that the man was apparently carrying something heavy in a case.

Lt Gen Claude van de Voorde, chief of staff of the Belgian defence cabinet, said he could not confirm media reports that explosives were in the car. “People start making up things quickly,” he said.

Police do not know if the car was stolen.

Police cordoned off the area from 9.40am until 10.30am and a video posted on Twitter show officers apparently deploying outside a supermarket.

“No one was hurt, it seems. The man is on the run,” a spokesman for prosecutors in Namur was reported as saying. “If I look at it from an outsider’s point of view, it seems incomprehensible,” he said. “Why would you attack a military barracks? There are plenty of weapons there to strike back.”

Flawinne is the site of one of Belgium’s major military barracks, home to the 2nd Commando Battalion.

Security was increased around the European commission, embassies and Jewish schools in Brussels after two men were killed in a police raid against a suspected terrorist cell in Verviers last January.

Four people were killed in a gun attack on a Jewish museum in Brussels last May. A 29-year-old man arrested in connection with that incident, Mehdi Nemmouche, is believed to have spent over a year in Syria. Police officers reportedly found a short video featuring the flag of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in his luggage.