A Somali mujahid with a machete shouted “Allahu Akhbar” as he rushed two soldiers in Brussels tonight. One of the soldiers was wounded slightly before the other soldier shot the jihadi dead.
Many thanks to Ava Lon for translating this brief news clip, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Below is a report from The Telegraph about the incident:
Machete-Wielding Man Shot Dead in Brussels Terror Attack After Attacking Soldiers
A knife-wielding man was shot dead on Friday after wounding a soldier in Brussels, in what authorities called a “terrorist attack”.
The man, who prosecutors said yelled ‘Allahu akbar’ (God is greatest) during the violence, was shot by soldiers on a street in the city centre.
“We believe that it is a terrorist attack,” said a prosecutors’ office spokeswoman, who added the attacker “is dead.”
The incident comes after attacks claimed by the Islamic State group in Spain last week killed 15 people and a knifeman’s stabbing spree in Finland left two dead and eight wounded.
One of the two soldiers targeted was “slightly” wounded, according to federal prosecutors, who have opened a terror probe of that attack launched around 8:00 pm (1800 GMT).
The mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close, told reporters the incident was the work of a “lone individual”.
Soldiers have been deployed at railway stations and landmark buildings since the Paris terror attacks in 2015, when a link to Brussels was first established.
Freddie Martyn, 25, told the Telegraph: “Just picked up my brother from the train station. We saw two to three ambulances, three army dogs, 10 police officers and the same amount of soldiers.
“Apparently a guy with a machete attacked one soldier and apparently it all went very quickly. They thought he had a bomb on him. They fired two shots directly at him and took him out.”
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | A knife attack in Belgium. A man | |
| 00:04 | assaulted soldiers downtown Brussels on Friday night | |
| 00:08 | before being shot by the sentries on duty. | |
| 00:12 | The events occurred shortly after 8pm, close to the Grand Place [Main Square]. | |
| 00:16 | The attacker, a Somali man about thirty years old, targeted two soldiers, | |
| 00:20 | one of whom was lightly injured in the hand. The magistrate leans | |
| 00:24 | towards a terrorist motive, but it appears to be an isolated act. |
After appearing on Drudge briefly (along with the near simultaneous attack near Buckingham Palace) it appears to have been dropped down the memory hole. Unless at least several innocents are killed it barely merits mentioning and can be written off as a crime committed by a head case rather than a jihadi.
You left out the part about mental health issues.
“They thought he had a bomb on him. ”
Yeah. I’m sure.
You can kill someone with a knife, let alone a machete, in a second, but the police have got to protect themselves by claiming a danger of a bomb before they can shoot someone rushing at them with a lifted machete. Chicago, in fact, recently gave a voluntary settlement of millions of dollars to the family of a black boy who was shot rushing at police with a knife. The boy with the knife, not the police, who fortunately for them, brought guns to a gun fight.
Perhaps not purely by coincidence, Brussels is the HQ of the EU, which is pushing regulations to disarm even more vigorously the already-radically disarmed citizens of the European countries composing the EU. Perhaps they will go to the Israeli model, with draconian gun control, but a huge business in private security. In fact, I kind of suspect the rabid gun control laws in Israel are actually a kind of full-employment scheme for Israelis, which works well and there are worse ideas floating around in the world.