Brussels shooting: Belgian PM says risk of terror attack remains 'probable' as authorities hunt for fugitive gunmen

Report claims missing suspects are likely to be brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, who have already had run-ins with police over car-jackings and shootings

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel addresses a news conference in Brussels after a shootout (Reuters)

An Isis flag, a book on Salafism and a Kalashnikov submachine gun with spare 11 cartridges were found near the body of the Algerian gunman killed during a six-hour police battle in Brussels.

The gunman was identified as Mohamed Belkaid, 35, barely known to police apart from a case of theft in 2014, officials said.

After a shoot-out he was “neutralised by a special forces sniper when he tried to open fire from the window of the flat”, said Thierry Werts from the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office.

The house search was one of more than 100 made since the November Paris massacre claimed by Isis in which 130 people died. Some 58 people have been arrested by Brussels police, and 11 charged.

Brussels police said two other suspects were still at large, after slipping away during the counter-terror raid in the quiet southern neighborhood of Forest. Mr Werts said their identities were unknown, but a local paper, La Dernière Heure, said they were likely to be brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, who had already had run-ins with police over car-jackings and shootings.

Charles Michel, the Belgian Prime Minister, said that the risk of a terrorist attack remains “serious” and “probable”, but the national terror threat level would stay at three, the second-highest. Belgium raised the alert to the top level of four because of a terror threat shortly after November’s attacks in Paris, but lowered it to three two weeks later.

Tuesday’s battle erupted as police approached the residence, which they thought to be empty. Four officers sustained minor injuries during the shooting.