Man stabs two women to death in horrific attack in Belgium restaurant
Local mayor says the attack was a domestic dispute and did not have 'terrorist character'
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Your support makes all the difference.Three people were killed in a horrific knife attack in a Belgian village of Moresnet-Chapelle, according to authorities.
A man allegedly entered a restaurant in the village near Liege and stabbed two women to death.
By the end of the attack, the suspect was also dead. It is not yet clear how he died.
Although police and emergency services sealed off several streets in the village, Wednesday’s incident was not related to terrorism, according to a local mayor and Belgian media reports.
Thierry Wimmer, mayor of the Herve region district of Plombieres, said on his Facebook page that “this act does not present any terrorist character” and was a domestic dispute that “falls within the private sphere”.
The mayor said the knife-wielding man stabbed both the owner of the restaurant and a relative.
The La Libre Belgique newspaper reported that a male attacker was among the three dead.
The Le Soir daily, meanwhile, said the man stabbed a former partner inside the restaurant.
Mr Wimmer said: “Local authorities offer their sincere condolences to the family and relatives of the victims.”
Officials have partially closed off the village in eastern Belgium and are still investigating the incident to discover a motive.
In May this year an attacker killed two police officers in a terrorist incident in the Belgian city of Liege. The man, later killed by police, stabbed the officers before stealing their weapons and shooting them dead before gunning down a bystander.
Authorities lowered the terrorist threat level from three to two in January, meaning an attack is consider unlikely. The terrorist bombings at Brussels airport and a metro station in March 2016 killed 32 people from around the world.
Additional reporting by agencies