Belgium vs Sweden abandoned after fatal shooting
Thousands of soccer fans were kept inside Belgium’s national stadium for about 2½ hours Monday after a game between Belgium and Sweden was abandoned at halftime because a gunman fatally shot two Swedish people in Brussels before kickoff.
The European Championship qualifier was being played some three miles (five kilometers) from the shooting in the centre of the Belgian capital, and more than 35,000 fans attended the match. With the suspect still at large and reportedly targeting Swedes, Belgian authorities kept fans inside the venue for security reasons before starting the evacuation around midnight local time.
Belgian police on Tuesday shot dead a 45-year-old Tunisian man accused of the killings.
“The perpetrator of the terrorist attack in Brussels has been identified and died,” Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden posted Tuesday on social media.
“Last night, three people left for what was supposed to be a wonderful soccer party. Two of them lost their lives in a brutal terrorist attack,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said at a news conference just before dawn. “Their lives were cut short in full flight, cut down by extreme brutality.”
De Croo said his thoughts were with the victims’ families and that he had sent his condolences to Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. Security has been beefed up in the capital, particularly around places linked to the Swedish community in the city.
“The attack that was launched yesterday was committed with total cowardice,” De Croo said.
Kristersson said “everything indicates this is a terrorist attack against Sweden and Swedish citizens, just because they are Swedish.” He said the suspect had occasionally stayed in Sweden but was not on police files there.
Fans chanted “All together” inside the King Baudouin Stadium, and thousands of supporters from both sides also shouted “Sweden!” The last of the Swedish fans — totaling about 650 — left the stadium at around 4 a.m. local time.
De Croo said the assailant was a Tunisian man living illegally in Belgium who used a military weapon to kill the two Swedes and shoot a third, who is being treated for “severe injuries.”
Manu Leroy, the CEO of the Belgian soccer union, said he discovered 10 minutes before kickoff that “something serious” had happened in downtown Brussels.
“It was decided in the first place that the match should go ahead because the stadium was the safest place to be at the time, so that the fans could stay here and be safe,” he said.
Fans remained patient well into the night and were still chanting as midnight approached. Leroy said the Swedish fans were last to leave the stadium “because the police will escort the Swedish fans and players, who will obviously go straight to the airport and leave.”
Sweden players returned to their clubs Tuesday after the overnight flight home from Brussels. Sweden captain Victor Lindelof said Monday that the players never felt any danger.