Shots were fired Tuesday during a raid on a southern Brussels residence tied to last year’s deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, officials told CNN.
Three police officers suffered slight injuries in two different shootouts in the same building in Belgium’s capital, said Marie Verdete, a spokeswoman for police in south Brussels.
A man in Forest, in southern Brussels, heard about 30 shots — including some from a suspect firing what appeared to be a rifle at police.
“I ended up in the middle of terror here in Brussels,” the witness said.
Police had arrived believing the apartment they were searching was empty, only to have people inside begin shooting at them, a senior Belgian counterrorism official told CNN.
As of 4 p.m. (11 a.m. ET), the operation was still ongoing along Rue du Dries, a small and typically calm road, according to Verdete. No arrests had been made at that point.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the November 13, 2015, carnage in Paris, including suicide bombings and torrents of gunfire that rattled through restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall, leaving at least 130 people dead and hundreds wounded.
Still, while ISIS itself may be most established in Syria and Iraq, European investigators focused intently on Belgium — and especially its capital, Brussels — on the heels of that attack.
Earlier this year, a senior Belgian counterterrorism official told CNN that two terrorist operatives phoned in orders from Brussels to those directly involved in the Paris attacks.
As such, these two had an even more integral role than Abdelhamid Abaaoud — the man long identified as the attacks’ ringleader — according to the official.