A woman who was shot at by police amid a stabbing attack in Ghent will be charged with attempted murder after the investigation found she had stabbed a total of four victims.
A commercial street in northern Ghent was closed down on Sunday afternoon after police opened fire in an attempt to neutralise the attacker, wounding her in the hand.
Upon her arrest, police were aware that she had stabbed two men, but the subsequent investigation showed she had previously stabbed and injured two other victims.
The first two victims were a 26-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman, whom the attacker stabbed in a residential neighbourhood at the end of the closed-down Oranjeboomstraat.
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Later, the woman attacked two other men, aged 45 and 52, with police saying that two of the four victims were seriously injured and that one was in critical condition on Sunday evening.
The motives of the attacker, identified as a 26-year-old woman from Ghent, remain unclear, with some witness accounts saying she was moving around on a bicycle and that she did not appear to know her victims, De Standaard reports.
Early on after her arrest, police said there were no indications that the woman had acted on a terrorist motive. She will be brought before an investigating judge and will face charges of attempted murder.
The police officer's use of a firearm will also be brought under investigation.
Gabriela Galindo
The Brussels Times
