Brussels _ Agencies
A policeman was injured when he was attacked by a knife man near the main police station in Brussels on Tuesday morning, a police spokeswoman said.
The attack coincides with the second day of the state visit by French President Emmanuel Makin to Belgium amid remembrance of the bloody countries of Paris and Brussels that took place in 2015 and 2016.
But Belgian Interior Minister Jean Gambon said the suspect in the "cowardly attack" is not included in Belgium´s anti-terrorism database.
"The police don´t know him as an extremist or terrorist," he told the radio. Apparently he was undergoing a psychological treatment but he was released a while ago, adding that the investigation is still going on.
The policeman was stabbed outside the main police station at 5 p.m. local time (40, 30 GMT), police spokeswoman Elsie Van de Kiir told AFP.
The policeman was lightly wounded and taken to hospital, she said.
"His colleagues responded by firing at the controlled attacker," she said, without endangering his life.
The police spokeswoman refused to confirm a report by local media that the attacker shouted "Allahu Akbar " during the incident.
He is scheduled to visit the Mulbeck district of Brussels later Tuesday, where he set up elements of the Islamic State who carried out the Paris attacks in 2015, which killed 130 people.
