A damaged car is pictured at the army barracks in Flawinne, Namur province, on Monday after a man attempted to drive through the barrack's barriers.
Reuters/Brussels
A man wearing a balaclava tried to force his car through the gates of a military barracks in Belgium on Monday, and several shots were fired, but no one was hurt, Belgian prosecutors said.
The man tried to enter the barracks in Flawinne, near the city of Namur and, after failing to do so, fled, prosecutors said.
"No one was hurt, it seems. The man is on the run," a spokesman for prosecutors in Namur said.
"If I look at it from an outsider's point of view, it seems incomprehensible," he added. "Why would you attack a military barracks? There are plenty of weapons there to strike back."
The newspaper La Derniere Heure said officials suspected there might have been a bomb in the car and a bomb disposal squad had been despatched, adding that the car had been found abandoned nearby.
Belgium foiled what authorities say was a plot to attack police in January, killing two men in one of several raids against an Islamist group that officials said had been about to launch large-scale attacks.
Since then, soldiers have been guarding several sites across the country, such as the European Commission headquarters, embassies and Jewish schools in the capital Brussels.
