Bomb Is Detonated in Brussels Train Station<br />By JAMES KANTER and RUSSELL GOLDMANJUNE 20, 2017<br />BRUSSELS — A man detonated a bomb in the Brussels Central train station on Tuesday, officials said, leading the police<br />and military to evacuate a popular tourist area of the Belgian capital months after coordinated terrorist attacks in the city killed more than 30 people.<br />The spokesman, Eric Van der Sypt, said the government considered the botched attack a "terrorist act." He would not, however, confirm whether the suspect had been killed, saying only<br />that the man had been "neutralized." An official in the prosecutor’s office said the blast occurred near the person who detonated the device, around 8:30 p.m.<br />The platform worker, Nicolas Van Herrewegen, said he did not see what happened to the man after the explosion, but a spokesman for Belgium’s federal prosecutor later told reporters<br />that the man had been shot by soldiers patrolling the station.<br />A platform worker at the station said that before the blast, he heard a man shout "Allahu akbar" (Arabic for "God is great")<br />and saw him try to enter an office with a rolling suitcase before detonating the device at another location.<br />Officers patrolling the area evacuated the station as well as the nearby Grand Place, a Unesco World Heritage site and a major tourist destination.<br />Belgium has been on alert since suicide bombers killed 32 people in coordinated<br />attacks on the Brussels subway and an international airport in March 2016.
