IS flag found with Algerian suspect killed in Brussels raid

Police found an Islamic State flag next to the body of an Algerian killed during a major anti-terror raid in Brussels, prosecutors said today, as investigators raced to track down two suspected extremists who escaped.

The man had been identified as Mohamed Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national who was illegally in Belgium, the federal prosecutor said a day after the chaotic shootout.

Two suspects were still at large after the gunbattle, which erupted as Belgian and French police searched a property in connection with the November Paris massacre claimed by IS in which 130 people died.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said the investigation was ongoing and that the national security council would meet later to discuss the country’s terror alert level after the incident.

Prosecutors said at least two suspects fired on police as the door was opened during a search of the property in the quiet Forest district, wounding three officers including a French policewoman.

A series of gunbattles then erupted, wounding a fourth officer in the head, and a man was “neutralised by a sniper of the special forces when he tried to open fire from the window of the flat”, spokesman Thierry Werts said.

“Next to his body was a Kalashnikov, a book on Salafism and an Islamic State flag,” Werts told a packed press conference.

Belkaid was unknown to Belgian authorities except for a case of theft in 2014, they said.

Werts said that “two persons who were probably in the flat and whose identity is not known fled the scene and are being tracked down”.

Searches throughout the southern district of Brussels found “no results”, he said.

Belgian media reported that the two missing suspects were brothers with links to terrorism but there was no immediate confirmation.