Belgian counter-terrorism police are probing the identity of a suspected suicide bomber shot dead by troops guarding a Brussels railway station after he set off explosives that failed to injure anyone.
"We consider this a terrorist attack," prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told reporters, declining comment on witness accounts that the man had shouted Islamist slogans before detonating what witnesses said were one or two devices in luggage.
Although no one was hurt on Tuesday night, billows of smoke pouring through Central Station and a shared awareness of Islamic State attacks in the city last year and more recently in Britain, France and elsewhere, sent evening commuters racing for cover.
Police halted rail traffic, evacuated the site and cleared streets crowded with tourists and locals enjoying a hot summer's evening in the historic city centre between the station and nearby Grand Place, Brussels' landmark Renaissance town square.
The Belgian capital, home to the headquarters of NATO and the European Union, has been on high alert since a Brussels-based Islamic State cell organised the attack that killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015.