Low-level clashes occurred in Wallonia following the shooting death of a man by police in the French-speaking town of Liège over the past weekend. The unrest spread to the nearby city of Herstal Saturday and Sunday night.
The shooting occurred in the migrant suburb of Oupeye near Liège city centre late Friday afternoon, August 18th, when a man on a quad bike failed to comply with an order to stop and instead proceeded to run a police officer over. The officer, who was subsequently hospitalised, opened fire on the man who was pronounced dead at the scene.
Almost immediately, violence erupted on the streets with Molotov cocktails hurled at police by marauding youths and a school partially burnt down. The rioting began Friday night and continued throughout Saturday and Sunday. No injuries have been recorded during the three nights of disturbances.
Belgian authorities are preparing for further unrest and have begun a consultation process with community groups in order to quell the disorder. The deceased man was identified as convicted local drug dealer Domenico D’atria and is not known to be of immigrant heritage. Officers found a quantity of cannabis on his body following inspection.
Calm had largely returned to the affected areas Sunday night with heavy police presence enabling authorities to gain the upper hand on rioters.
A local socialist mayor decried the inter-communal violence and blamed it on the spread of online misinformation saying that false rumours had been shared saying that police had shot the deceased in the back. In a worrying development, personal details of police personnel wrongly believed to have been behind the shooting have been maliciously circulated online.
No online footage exists of the original shooting in Oupeye, unlike in the altercation that sparked a week of racial unrest in France earlier this year. Belgian authorities were swift to swoop on the contagion of rioting in Belgium in July with advanced intelligence helping police prevent riots from gaining hold in Brussels.
