Knife attacker shot by soldiers in Brussels

A man shot on Friday after attacking two soldiers with a knife in Brussels has died, Belgium's federal prosecutors said, adding they were treating the event as an attempted terrorist murder.

The attack took place on Boulevard Emile Jacqmain in the centre of Brussels.

A spokesperson for federal prosecutors said the man had shouted "Allahu Akbar" (Arabic for "God is Great") twice during the attack.

We believe that it is a terrorist attack," the spokesperson said, adding that the attacker "is dead."

The soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack, one in the face and the other in the hand.

“With the identity that we currently have, it is a 30-year-old man who is not known for terrorist activities,” the spokesman said.

In addition to regular police, Brussels streets are being patrolled by soldiers due to a heightened security threat level in the wake of militant attacks in Paris and the Belgian capital in 2015 and 2016.

In June, troops shot dead a suspected suicide bomber in Brussels’ central train station but there were no other casualties, in what authorities treated a terrorist incident.