Four people were killed at a Jewish museum in Belgium on Saturday in an attack that European Jewish leaders are already comparing to 2012’s massacre at the Ozar HaTorah school in Toulouse, France.
The attack, which took place at the Jewish Museum in central Brussels on Saturday, is being approached as racially motivated by Belgian authorities, who posited that it was motivated by anti-Semitism.
A Belgian news site reported that two of the four fatalities from the shooting at Brussels’ Jewish museum were an Israeli couple.
Israeli media reported on Sunday morning that a Tel Aviv couple in their 50's, who were on vacation in Brussels, were among the victims.
A third fatality was a female volunteer at the Jewish Museum of Belgium, according to an unconfirmed report Saturday night on the news site HLN.be, which is the online edition of the Het Laatste Nieuws daily. A fourth victim, whom HLN reported was a 23-year-old employee of the museum, was also reportedly killed.
Police has no suspects in custody, the news site also reported. Belgian authorities are yet to release the names of those who died in the museum and the fourth person.
The shooter aimed for the victims throats and heads, witnesses told the daily.
According to HLN.be, police no longer suspect a person whom they detained shortly after the attack. That person is currently regarded as a witness, HLN.be reported.
Authorities are looking for the shooter, who was driven to the museum by a suspected accomplice in an Audi car, and the driver and are analyzing security camera footage.
Belgium's interior minister, Joëlle Milquet, was quoted saying by the RTBF Belgian television station that anti-Semitic motives could be behind the attack.
"It's a shooting ... at the Jewish Museum," she was quoted saying. "All of this can lead to suspicions of an act of anti-Semitism.”
