Belgian soldiers shot a man suspected of being a would-be suicide bomber at Brussels Central Station, reports BBC quoting Belgium state officials.

He was shot after reportedly setting off a small explosion and no-one else is believed to have been injured.

Prosecutors later said the man had died. They are treating the incident as a terrorist attack.

Earlier, on March 2016, 32 people were killed in attacks on Brussels claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

According to Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, quoting prosecutors, the man who was shot was wearing a rucksack and a bomb belt.

He detonated a device when he attracted the attention of soldiers in the station, stated the paper.

Nicolas Van Herrewegen, a railway sorting agent, said he had gone down to the station's mezzanine level when he heard someone shouting.

"Then he cried 'Allahu Akbar' and blew up a wheeled suitcase," he told AFP news agency.

"I was behind a wall when it exploded. I went down and alerted my colleagues to evacuate everyone. He [the suspect] was still around but after that we didn't see him."

"It wasn't exactly a big explosion but the impact was pretty big," he added. "People were running away."

Van Herrewegen described the suspect as well-built and tanned with short hair, wearing a white shirt and jeans.

"I saw that he had something on him because I could see wires emerging, so it may have been a suicide vest," he said.

Lawyer Remy Bonnaffe, 23, was waiting for a train and took a photograph of flames seconds after the explosion.

He told Reuters news agency that people close to the explosion appeared unhurt and he saw no obvious damage to nearby walls.

Earlier, on 22 March of last year, three suicide bombers mounted twin attacks on the city's Zaventem airport and Maelbeek underground station.

BDST: 0915 HRS, JUN 21, 2017
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