Driver arrested after van plows into Brussels cafe terrace

Police cordon off an area in the center of Brussels after an incident in which a van hit a terrace in Brussels, Friday, Aug. 26, 2022. (AP)

• It was not clear whether the incident was an accident or deliberate

BRUSSELS: A van driver plowed through a crowded cafe terrace in Brussels’ city center shopping and tourism district on Friday, lightly wounding six people before escaping the scene.
Belgium’s terrorism tracking Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAM) briefly raised the threat level in the capital from “medium” to “serious” — from two to three on a scale of four.
But the level was dropped back to medium a few hours later after officials found “reassuring elements in their investigation,” an OCAM spokesman told AFP.
Initially, police had said it was too soon to speculate on whether the driver had deliberately targeted the diners, but that investigators had found the van and were hunting for the suspect.
“Shortly before 1:00 p.m. a van drove into a terrace on Saint Michel street. The driver fled in his vehicle, the emergency services were very quickly on the spot,” a spokeswoman told AFP.
“There were six minor injuries that were treated at the scene,” she said.
Brussels mayor Philippe Close told the daily Le Soir there had been a mixture of tourists and local shoppers on the terrace and that some of the witnesses were in a state of shock.
“What is certain is that the vehicle was traveling at an extremely high speed,” he said.
Brussels prosecutors were to hold a news conference later on Friday to provide an update in their investigation.