The whole of Belgium was thrown into mourning on Sunday after a car rams into crowd of carnival goers early in the morning, killing six people and injuring many more. However, officials have ruled out an act of terrorism.
Around 5:00 a.m. (0400 GMT), the tragedy occurred as the carnival of Strepy-Bracquegnies, a district in the former coal-mining town of La Louviere, was getting started.
“We know that a car rammed into a group (of carnival goers) and that there are six dead and 26 injured, including ten individuals who are in critical conditions,” prosecutor Damien Verheyen told reporters at the town’s city hall.
The suspects were born in 1988 and 1990, according to investigators, and came from La Louviere, a rust belt village near the French border in Belgium. Authorities had no prior knowledge of their committing comparable crimes.
The two were coming from a nightclub, according to Chief Prosecutor Christian Henry, “and had just dropped off another individual right before the incidents.”
He told RTBF news that blood test results will be available on Monday, and that they would “enable us to say if they were on drugs or not.”
“There is nothing that leads to radicalism or extremism,” he remarked.
“The circumstances have been classified as murder,” he added, “but we’ll see what the inquiry reveals and whether we might reclassify it as manslaughter.”
Source: AFP.
