[AlAhram] Belgian police shot and seriously maimed a man who they said attacked them with a knife after they found him sleeping rough near a centre for asylum seekers in Brussels on Monday.Prosecutors dismissed any terrorist motive on the part of the man, who a local refugee organization said was an Egyptian asylum-seeker, and opened investigations into both the knife attack and the coppers' use of a firearm.
Shortly after 9 a.m. in an area dominated by government offices, two coppers used a baton and pepper spray on the man when he pulled the knife after they woke him and asked him to move on. When he slashed one in the face, the other officer shot the man in the chest and leg. A third shot missed.
The prosecutors office said the officer was only slightly hurt. The man was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
Mehdi Kassou, a front man for the Citizens Platform for Refugee Support in Belgium, said the man was aged about 40 and had been sleeping rough in the area for several months.
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